


Might As Well

by anapudim



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and they will don't worry, because it's a thing i like, character tags to be added as they show up, friendship first, the slowest burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 57,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anapudim/pseuds/anapudim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lena never really had any grand plans, no real course in life. But between getting abducted by aliens and getting rescued by a Terran turned space outlaw, she wasn't sure when she had decided that ‘might as well’ was an acceptable reaction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing with this idea for a while and just recently I thought why not, let's post it! Hence, here it is. This is my first posted fic in a while (first one in this site uwu) and although I've been writing for some time I'm not what you'd call a master writer so ye be warned. Enjoy!

Lena was paranoid.

Well, she hadn't always been this paranoid. Usually it was just the typical 'don't go into creepy dark alleys' and 'watch out for anyone trying to roofie your drink', but she had to admit her paranoia had been increasingly growing over the years. She only had herself to blame though. Her and her life choices – you don’t start illegally hacking into people’s computers without becoming the least bit paranoid that someone is going to find out what you've been up to and throw you in jail.

Maybe she should stop.

Maybe, she mused, she could put her computer skills to a non-illegal use. She was pretty good at it, if she said so herself. Maybe she should stop all the illegal hacking and just, you know, get a move on with her life, do something productive. Maybe.

 _After this job_ _I'll get right on it_.

(Never mind that was what she’d said the last two times.)

Sipping from her coffee, Lena looked over the other people occupying the coffee shop to make sure no one seemed too… suspicious. Aaaand there was the paranoia again – she stared a little longer at a man with a dark coat standing on the door of the coffee shop that looked a tad suspicious (or at least to her paranoia-filled mind) until someone that seemed to be his girlfriend showed up and they left together.

She really wasn't _that_ paranoid usually. She had her reasons, she really did. Mainly, the fact that just a few hours ago she had picked up on a really, _really_ weird signal on her computer. It wasn't like anything she'd ever seen before, floating around on a rarely used frequency that when she decrypted it (with some difficulty), only looked like a bunch of strange symbols. She had stopped right there, figuring the symbols probably needed to also be decrypted and not wanting to find out what they meant (okay that was a lie – she was so damn curious about it – but what she didn't want to face were the consequences of that if she did). However, it did leave her feeling extremely paranoid.

She hoped with all her might that no one noticed her picking up on it.

\---

Lena had watched enough cop shows to know that you should never return to the scene of the crime and, granted, there was no crime committed (no murder at least, the legality of it all was still questionable), but she felt uneasy going back to where she had picked up that weird signal.

It was an antenna in the middle of nowhere, right outside of town, that sat in the middle of an empty farm. She wasn't going back there out of her own free will, but rather because she had a job to finish. Lena briefly wondered when and why she started getting involved with such shady characters, ones that ‘hired’ her to install a backdoor on the computer terminal of this weird in-the-middle-of-nowhere antenna. She had no idea why there was such thing in this place, nor why they needed a backdoor to it, but she didn't ask questions - she’d be done and they’d pay her and she could go on her merry way. After a while of living on her own, money started becoming scarce so she had to get by with what skills she had.

Which apparently involved getting mixed up with shady figures that one of her ‘friends’ – and she used that word loosely – put her up with.

This also meant she had to finish this job or take it up to the shady guy, so she decided to suck it up and go back. It was her own damn fault that she got distracted with the weird signal (that she picked up while using the antenna in the first place).

It took her a bus and some hitchhiking to get to the abandoned farmhouse where the antenna was, and that was the easy part. Not only it was creepy as hell during the night (which she figured would be the best time to do her, uh, illegal activities), but she was still feeling extremely paranoid at the whole signal thing.  Thankfully, she somewhat remembered the way from her previous incursion the day before and was able to get to the computer terminal relatively quicker than before. Also considering she didn’t have to start it all over again, she could just pick up from where she left off and be done with it sooner.

Lena nodded to herself as she plugged her computer back in – _alright, just have to finish the thing and then you can go home._

(Home being a crappy motel room, but still. Better than nothing, right?)

Time flew as she focused on writing the code, only shifting position every now and then because she was sitting uncomfortably on the dirty ground. When the wind picked up she pulled her jacket closer to her body, but never let her attention waver from the computer. Even when the wind started whipping her hair around (she should have worn a hair band) she only let go of the computer after she finished typing and let the computer work on its own.

Lena stretched her arms and stood up, brushing the dirt off her jeans. Just a little while longer and she would be finished with this, all she had to do was wait for the computer to finish processing.

_After this I’m definitely not getting involved with shady characters again._

Her paranoia struck again and she felt a prickling feeling on the back of her neck that made her look around. She couldn't see much in the dark, although there wasn't much to be seen other than plants and dust and the abandoned barn just a few feet away. And also wind, but you can’t really _see_ the wind so it didn't count.

And you can’t see noise either.

But she definitely heard something.

Lena turned abruptly, trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. It sounded like – a helicopter? And it was getting louder, as in, getting closer.

_Shit. Shit shit shit._

Lena turned back to her things and started to frantically shove them back inside her bag - she didn't know and didn't care what the noise was but she was _not_ risking getting caught over this. She shot a glance at the computer just as she pulled the strap of her bag over her head and cursed when she saw that it wasn't done yet. _Screw it, time to go._ She slammed her laptop shut and hastily disconnected it, the growing noise of the helicopter urging her to just _get the hell out of there_.

And get the hell out of there she did. Or at least she tried to.

Just as Lena was making a run for the barn – maybe she could hide in there – a bright light flashed down on her, nearly blinding her and making her stop in her tracks. With one hand shielding her face and the other clutching on her laptop, Lena looked up and what she saw was most _definitely not_ a helicopter.

Or a plane.

Or a jet.

Or any kind of aircraft that she'd ever seen.

Truth be told, she was twelve percent sure she was actually just dreaming, and probably would wake back up in her room and think to herself ‘wow, I really should stop watching alien movies before bed’. Meanwhile, the other eighty eight percent was filled with pure panic. And then all she registered was an even brighter light and an extremely uncomfortable sensation passing through her body before she didn't register anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope it wasn't too confusing! I have a way of, er, stumbling with words so  
> Next chapter is probably coming out tomorrow because I already have it written down (and it's also longer wooo), but I wouldn't expect daily updates later on (because I suck). Also I'm still undecided on whether this thing is gonna have an actual plot or if it's gonna be various interconnecting oneshots, but I guess we'll find out later heh  
> heh  
> eeeh  
> (I'm making it up as I go oh no)


	2. Accidentally Abducted, Accidentally Rescued

The first thing that her mind took notice when coming to was the smell. The stinky, worse than rotten eggs, god awful _smell_ that was making its way up her nose. The second thing was the damp surface she was currently laying on, and thirdly, the really uncomfortable position her body was in.

Shifting slightly, dully noting the presence of a headache, Lena tried to get her bearings in what, where, when and who, but so far she had no answer to any of them. She opened her eyes, but having her face was half plastered to the floor made her line of sight very limited, so she dragged her arms up and lifted her head up from the floor.

And instantly wanted to lie back down and pretend it was all a dream.

In front of her were metal bars, as in, actual metal bars, as in, she was in an actual _cell_.

_Oh no no no, don’t tell me I’ve been arrested, please don’t--_

Scrambling into a sitting position, she let her eyes roam the place trying to figure out what the hell was going on. However, other than the fact that she was in a dingy and disgusting cell and the only thing she could see beyond the bars was the wall of what seemed to be a corridor, she couldn’t find any clues. That, and her bag was missing.

She brushed the hair out of her eyes and breathed in – although she quickly regretted that due to the unpleasant smell – while trying to calm herself enough to think rationally. It didn’t work – the minute she started hearing footsteps in her direction panic flooded her and she scooted to the back of the cell. And when a large figure stepped into sight, she would have done a double take had she not been staring at it wide-eyed.

_What the actual fuck?_

The thing wasn’t… human. Or it didn’t look like it. Looked vaguely humanoid, sure, but bigger, crinklier and greener. Also angrier. Or very displeased. Or maybe that was the thing’s natural face, at this point she didn’t know.

The point was—she _didn’t know_. Her mind had experienced the equivalent of a blue screen of death and was on the verge of shutting down.

She just… didn’t know… what was _happening_.

The thing grumbled unintelligently at her and when she didn’t answer, a second… thing (red, slimmer, slimier) showed up and it too grumbled something at her. Lena just looked at them both with a confused expression, and then the two things started arguing with each other. She watched as one of them angrily stomped away only to return a minute later with something on his hand (she was assuming it was a he at this point, she might be proven wrong). Her mind finally snapped into action when the red one opened the cell door and stepped inside, survival-slash-panic instincts kicking in as she made a desperate move to scramble away from his approaching hand - especially when she saw the weird device he held in his other hand, one that was also closing in quickly. All to no avail, however, as he grabbed her by the jacket and pressed the device thing to her neck.

She felt a sharp pain where the device connected and suddenly her ears started ringing, which made her eyes shut tight in discomfort.

“…rstan…e…ow?”

_What?_

“…underst…e …ow?”

“What?”

“…understand me now?!”

Lena blinked quickly, the ringing in her ears fading away as she suddenly realized that she _could_ understand him now. It was like all the grumbles and unintelligible grunts had given away to actual words, or better yet, she could understand them. And it was _weird_.

The red guy shook her harshly and she was jerked out of her thoughts. “Can you understand what I’m sayin’, girl?!”

“Uh— Y-yeah.”

He grunted and dropped her unceremoniously to the ground. “Unevolved primates, don’t even have translators.” He grumbled as he turned away. “Bet won’t even make a good buck.” _What?_

“Hey!” The other one, the big green one, barked, smacking a baton-looking thing against the bars that emitted electricity and made her jump. “You were the one who picked up on tha beacon, weren’t ya?”

Her eyes widened. _Oh God, the signal—shit! What should I say?_

Should she lie? Should she tell the truth? That is, if the signal she’d picked up was even what they were talking about, but the question was, was it a good thing or a bad thing?

_shiiiit_

“He asked you a question!” The other one barked and she jumped.

“I-I—Maybe? Yes?”

The green one shot her a big and evil grin that sent chills through her spine. “Maybe this one’s not so unevolved after all.”

When Lena looked at the other one she saw that he had an equally predatory grin on his face. “Think boss can sell this one for a good price?”

“If she’s not as useless as the rest of that lousy planet.” He smacked his baton against the bars again, emitting another spark. She assumed it was the baton that was electrified, considering that they both had touched the bars without any harm. “No wonder no one comes around here.”

Who the hell were these people? What was she doing there? And why did she have a sinking feeling she was not going to like it?

\---

She was left to her own devices after the two guys left and she spent most of the time sitting on the ground trying to process everything that had happened.

She remembered the light and the not-helicopter (that looked like a space shi— _nope not going there_ ), and then she woke up in the cell. Then the two guys and the translator? And talk about selling her?

She’d seen enough sci-fi movies to not let her mind wander into sci-fi territory. Plus, after she’d scooted towards the bars she could make out words being spoken somewhere down the corridor, such as ‘boss’, ‘ship’ and ‘trade’, and her mind came to the most illogically logical conclusion:

She was in a space ship. With aliens. Who wanted to sell her? That part wasn’t really clear, but she was starting to think she might be right.

_Alright Lena, how are you gonna get out of this now?_

She’d checked her pockets, but there wasn’t anything useful inside. The only thing resembling a weapon that she owned was her taser, but that had been in her bag and who knows where that was now.

So she was stuck. In an alien spaceship.

She buried her hands in her hair and let her head fall to the knees.

\---

The light in the corridor flickered every six seconds.

That was about the only progress she made in that place.

Other than that, nothing. No clue as to how much time had passed, how she would get out, or what would happen to her. Well, she had some clue about _that_ and it wasn’t comforting.

No one else had showed up in front of her cell ever since green guy and red guy left, and Lena was half relieved and half terrified. The stubborn part in her was starting to want answers, and if she had to count how many light flickers there were in a minute again she might just start yelling until someone appeared.

_And then what?_

With a defeated sigh she slumped back on the far wall.

\---

She wasn’t sure how long had passed until something actually started happening.

Agitation could be heard down the corridor, followed by shouts and what she could swear were gunshots. Lena lifted herself off the ground but kept close to the far wall – if those _were_ gunshots, probably a wise idea to stay as far away as possible from the open bars. A few minutes later, a couple of different looking aliens passed by her cell running, both holding gun-looking weapons and with angry expressions on their faces. She was tempted to get closer to the bars to see if she could actually _see_ what was happening, but shoved that urge down as more aliens ran down the corridor.

She could hear someone shouting orders and she vaguely recognized the voice as the red guy from before. And then there was a large red body flying down the corridor and by her cell that she was pretty sure it _was_ the red guy from before.

She jumped back – she hadn’t even realized she had inched forward – when the body crashed nearly in front of her cell. Part of her wondered if he was dead, while part of her only stared at the figure that had stepped into her line of sight.

Tall, dark red jacket and a metallic… mask…helmet thingy, complete with space-age guns that she assumed were the cause of the other guy’s… fall. Also she had only just noticed the fact that a squeaky ‘ohmygod’ had escaped her mouth when the red guy flew by, which made the guy with the metal mask turn his attention to her.

Great, first alien kidnappers, now alien murderers? What did she do to make the universe hate her? She was seriously reconsidering all her life choices in the future. If she had one.

“Who are you?” He asked, his voice somewhat muffled by the mask.

Her eyebrows shot up, and at a later time thinking back at this, she would realize that her freaking out quota had reached its maximum to the point that her brain simply didn’t care anymore. “Who are _you_?”

The guy lifted a hand to the side of his head and suddenly the mask started to shrink away, revealing a – surprisingly – human looking face, complete with blonde hair, light eyes and stubble. The normality of it all was just so _surreal._ “Where are you from?”

What is this, twenty questions? And what exactly was an acceptable answer here? “I, Uh—Toronto. Earth?”

The man seemed taken aback for a moment, before movement down the corridor drew his attention. Lena noted how he seemed eager to leave – he was slightly bouncing on his legs and his hands were tightening on his guns.

And it suddenly occurred to her that he might be her way out.

“You’re not gonna leave me here… are you?” She asked. Or rather, nearly begged ( _screw dignity, I’d much rather have my life_ ).

He seemed conflicted for a moment and she wondered that if despite his normal appearance he actually was a murderer. Or at least someone she really shouldn’t trust.

_Not like I have a choice._

The man gave a grunt and seemingly gave in to whatever internal battle he was having. “Just—Get away from the door.”

Nodding, Lena backed away as far as she could (which meant pressing herself against the wall) as the man raised one of his guns and fired at door. Lena covered her head with her hands as the door was blown back by the force of what was definitely not normal bullets, and before she could fully process what was happening the man was already ushering her outside.

“Come on, we have to go _now_.” And then he was pulling her along as he ran down the corridor.

She decided that yes, getting the hell out of there seemed like a good idea.

They ran until they reached the end of the corridor which branched out into a larger room. In it, there was a table on the far off side, and on top of it was her bag (it wasn’t lost!) and a bunch of other paraphernalia that didn’t peak her interest.

“Wait!” She called out and stopped, which caused the man to stop as well and throw her a ‘what the hell are you doing’ look. “Those are my things.”

Lena ignored him for the time being as she rushed towards her bag, grabbing it and pulling the strap over her head—

And she felt stupid for not noticing the big green guy from before coming out of the doorway right next to her and charging at her with his electrified batons. She barely had time to blink before the hulking mass of green was blasted back against the wall – thanks to the man’s quick reflexes and a shot from his guns (or blasters. They were definitely blasters). Then a second guy came out, and on impulse, Lena grabbed the fallen green guy’s batons and (being lucky enough that the ‘on’ button wasn’t hard to find) slammed them into the other attacker. He convulsed before falling to the floor.

_Holy shit._

Her ‘rescuer’ had to tug at her arm to snap her out of it – _what did I just do holy shit_ \- , and taking a deep breath she followed him out of the room.

\--- 

Their escape route wasn’t a smooth as Lena had hoped, but any obstacles were quickly met with a blast from her rescuer’s blasters. If she had to be honest, she’d say that they got extremely lucky, that and the fact that her kidnappers didn’t seem very… competent (they all fell pretty quickly, and no one seemed to have an organized plan of attack).

The rest of the ship was as filthy as the cell she’d been in, but Lena only paid it a half a mind as they ran down corridors and soon enough (or not soon enough – she couldn’t wait to get out of there) they entered some kind of cargo hold and the man directed them to a hidden corner.

And in there was ship - smaller, shiny, orange and blue.

“Come on!” The man spoke, running towards the ship and motioning her along. Lena could hear angry shouting behind them and would much rather take her chances with the man that might or might not be a murderer, than with the ones that abducted her (and were planning to sell her - that was a key point).

The man ran to a nearby panel and pressed something that she didn’t see, before running back to the ship. She barely had time to register the doors opening to reveal space – actual space – and the wind picking up (and some part of her wondered why they weren’t being sucked out, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?) when she was pulled inside the ship.

It was only when they were safely inside (and the man had run to the pilot seat) that Lena noticed she was still clutching the two electrified batons as if her life depended on it. Finally snapping out of the ‘run for your life’ state her mind had been stuck in, she dropped the batons and shook her head, but didn’t have much time to dwell on the fact she was escaping an alien spaceship into _another_ alien spaceship when the ship lurched and she realized they were taking off. Looking around for something to hold on to, she decided to follow the man into the cockpit and gingerly sat down on the seat beside him.

Lena only had a vague idea of what happened next – there was a lot of shaking and turning, and she desperately tried to find a seatbelt – but when the man gave a sigh of relief and slumped back in the seat, Lena let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“I think we lost them.” He spoke.

Lena gave him a tiny nod – her brain was still struggling to catch up to the whole situation.

“Hey.” He said. She didn’t realize he was addressing her until he spoke again. “What’s your name?”

“Uh—" Brain still struggling. "Lena. Lena Hansen.”

“And you’re from Terra?”

She shot him a confused look.

“Earth.” He explained.

Was that what they called Earth out there? “Yeah.”

The man scratched his chin in thought. “How did you end up on a slavers ship?”

Now that was the question of the year, wasn’t it? “Well, I, uh… I was just minding my own business – on Earth – and then…” She shrugged.

“Can’t believe they went into Asgardian territory.” The man spoke, mostly to himself. Then, he turned back to her. “I’m Peter Quill.” The man, Peter, she supposed, introduced himself. She briefly wondered if his name had an actual different spelling other than ‘Peter’ because it couldn’t be really ‘Peter’, could it? That was such an… _ordinary_ name. “Also from Earth.” Oh. Maybe that’s why.

“You’re from Earth?” She asked. Lena couldn’t help herself – a little glimmer of hope made itself known, of actually finding someone from her own planet, of maybe, just maybe, being able to convince him to take her back home. He was from Earth too, wasn’t he? Shouldn’t be too hard.

“Yeah. Haven’t been there in a while.”

They lapsed into an awkward silence, Lena trying to figure out the best way to ask him for a ride home while he stared at some of the screens and pushed a few buttons. When the silence got too much for her – she had spent who knows how much time in silence in that cell – she decided _screw it, time for a direct approach_.

“So, uh—Can you… take me home?”

Peter froze. That was not a good sign. “To… Earth?”

She shot him a half desperate, half ‘duh’ look.

“It’s complicated.” He turned back to a screen, effectively breaking eye contact. Lena kept staring at him, waiting for him to elaborate – that was his own planet, it shouldn’t be _that_ complicated – and didn’t give up even when it was clear he was decidedly ignoring her. When he risked a glance at her and caught her still staring, he sighed and turned back. “Like I said, it’s Asgardian territory. And they don’t like outsiders flying about, especially not ones like… me.”

She frowned. “Like you?”

Peter shook his head. “It’s complicated, I uh—We’ll figure it out, okay? Right now I just need to get back before Yondu decides to have ‘Peter Quill on a yakka stick’.”

Lena went quiet. Probably not a good idea to antagonize the man who rescued her, and despite not know who Yondu or what a yakka stick was, it didn’t seem very pleasant. At least – she thought, settling back on the seat – she had managed to escape those ‘slavers’ and was still relatively fine (if only a bit shaken up).  She felt like she could relax a bit and worry about the ‘how am I going to get home’ part later.

(Until she realized that Peter had said they were heading back to somewhere, and if she had to put two and two together she’d say it was to where this Yondu was.)

(She really hoped she hadn’t stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So new chapter! Longer and with more things happening and Peter showed up! I apologize if anything is too confusing I often confuse myself. So there's that.  
> (and once again, I'm making it up as a go along)


	3. Things of Interest

As the Milano docked into the bay, Peter swore he could already hear Yondu’s angry yelling even from inside the ship. And honestly, he didn’t doubt it – the minute Peter stepped outside he really _could_ hear Yondu’s voice booming towards him.

“Quill!” Peter heard and braced himself for getting nearly impaled by a yakka arrow in the near future. It was inevitable. “Quill!”

Peter smiled – maybe he could bullshit his way out. Didn’t hurt to try. “Hey, Yondu! How’s it going?”

“Where have you been, boy?!”

Peter didn’t flinch when Yondu moved in way too close for comfort, only raised his head a little higher as he spoke. “Exploring.”

“Exploring what exactly, that you couldn’t share with your fellow Ravagers?” Yondu motioned to the others around him, then set his hands on his hips – deliberately pushing his coat back to expose the yakka arrow as an unspoken threat. It certainly didn’t have to be spoken for Peter to feel threatened.

The Terran glanced down before shooting him a tight smile. “Things of… Interest.”

Truth be told, Peter had nothing - other than the Terran girl aboard his ship. Before he decided on breaking into that slaver ship he knew that he wouldn’t find anything of interest to Yondu and the Ravagers, nothing that would justify the reckless break in anyway. But when he’d heard that the slavers had picked something up on his home planet – he couldn’t help himself. It was just too tempting – to find something from his former home, anything, even if they were just worthless trinkets, and before he knew it he was already stealthy-invading the slaver ship. He hadn’t found anything worth his interest, and he certainly hadn’t been expecting to find a terrified Terran girl asking for help (but honestly, what had he been expecting? They were slavers, they picked up _slaves_ , what else did he think he was going to find?).

Peter was still undecided if it had been worth the risk. On one hand, he probably saved that girl’s life. On the other hand, Yondu was probably going to kill him.

Well…

“What kind of things are talking about here?” Yondu became slightly less murderous at the prospect of items to sell, however, Peter knew it wouldn’t last long. “Where they at?”

“Uh, in my ship.” And Peter immediately regretted that as Yondu brushed past him. “But, you see--”

Yondu stopped in his tracks and turned to look at him square in the eye. “You see, what?”

“It’s not exactly… a _thing._ ”

Yondu narrowed his eyes, but chose not to say anything as he resumed walking towards the Milano, Peter following suit.

\---

Lena felt nervous waiting inside the ship, but mostly because Peter seemed nervous when he left (and told her to stay put). The adrenaline she felt when escaping the slavers had died down, leaving her body extremely tired and sore, and the headache she’d felt before had come back full force.

In short, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to fight if things went awry.

Despite feeling fatigued, Lena felt the waiting eating away at her patience. While her body just wanted to sink down in the seat and not move for a month, her mind was functioning overtime thinking up all the possibilities of what was going to happen next - without her consent. It seemed like an eternity until she finally heard someone step back inside – more than one person actually, if she counted the footsteps. Lena got up from her seat and turned around, coming face to face with a guy who certainly didn’t look happy.

And also had blue skin.

The blue alien guy (who seemed more human-ish than the ones she’d encountered previously) looked her up and down before giving a humourless snort and turning to Peter, who appeared right behind him. “That the _interesting thing_ you been exploring, boy?”

Peter’s eyes widened. “What? No!” Lena might be extremely tired and on the verge of a mental shutdown, but even she understood what the blue alien was implying.

And just _no_.

“I found her on a slaver ship.” Peter said. “I don’t know what exactly are you implying here but I--”

“The hell were you doing on a slaver ship?” Blue interrupted. Peter shut up immediately. “Us Ravagers don’t get mixed up with their kind!” What the hell was a Ravager?

“I just—Listen!” Peter said, raising his hands up in front of him as Blue was seemingly launching into an angry rant. “I heard rumours that the slavers had picked something up on Terra - I was in the neighbourhood so I thought, why not? Then things happened, and as it turns out, it wasn’t something, it was some _one_. So she kinda tagged along.”

Blue narrowed his eyes at him and then turned to her. At this point Lena was too tired to be terrified, so she simply stared back.

_If they’re going to kill me they better do it soon, because I’m about to drop dead on my feet anyway._

“And what exactly do you plan on doing with her?”

Peter opened his mouth a couple of times, then scratched his head. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.” And somehow, she was not surprised.

Blue grunted. “Just drop her off at the next port. ‘Til then you feed her, look after her, make sure she doesn’t break anything.”

“I’m not a pet!” Lena exclaimed and froze. Probably should not have talked back at the angry alien.

But she’d had a long day, give her a break.

Thankfully, Blue only smirked before turning away and leaving.

Once he was out of sight, Peter let out a breath and threw himself into the nearest seat. Lena shifted her attention to him warily – right now, he was her only chance of getting home, and even that was slim. Would he actually do it – leave her on the next port like the other guy had said? And if he did so, what would she do then?

Her only shot right now was appealing to his good side, and she had no idea where that would take her.

She swallowed. “Can’t you really take me home?”

Peter looked up then and _maybe_ he wasn’t completely insensitive after all – Lena spotted a hint of regret on his face, however brief. Unfortunately, it did nothing to comfort her. “I don’t think I can.” His eyes dropped. “Sorry.”

It just didn’t make any sense. “But I thought you said you were from Earth?” She asked.

He sighed. “Yeah, but I, ah—haven’t been there in a _very_ long time. Not ever since I left.”

“You never went back?”

He shot her a quick glance before standing up. “Not really no. There are things… in the way.”

As Peter began to move around, Lena worked up the courage to ask the question she wanted to ask, but didn’t want the answer to. If he wasn’t going to get her home, what then?

“So, you—are you really going to drop me off at the next spaceport, or…”

Peter once again looked back at her, except this time he had the same expression from before when she had asked him to get her out of that cell. Something of an internal battle raging on, trying to make up his mind about something. She hoped he made the right choice, or at least the choice that didn’t end with her abandoned on an unknown planet left to fend for herself.

“We’ll see.” He said and turned away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out shorter than I had intended :c I was going to continue but it felt right ending it here so I can start something new on next chapter!  
> Next one might not come tomorrow tho because busy in real life, but I'll try to make it longer (also I can't wait to get over the introductions part and move on to friendship building but alas this is necessary).  
> Also this is set a couple of years or so pre-movie, in case anyone was wondering (and in case anyone is even reading? uwu)


	4. Awkward Silence and Dependency Issues

“Is there a bathroom in this thing?” She blurted out.

Peter blinked and looked up from where he was checking his guns, slightly surprised – he hadn’t been expecting her to ask another question like that, at least not after spending the past ten minutes in silence (he’d kinda figured - and hoped - she’d gone mute). They had both moved on to the lower level of the ship, pretty much not saying a word after the whole ‘I can’t get you home and have no idea what to do with you’ thing. She, he assumed, was still in shock over the entire situation, and he didn’t say anything mostly out of guilt.

Peter Quill was feeling guilty.

There was a first time for everything.

Not only was he feeling guilty, but this whole story about getting abducted from your home brought back memories of his own. The ones about feeling terrified, confused, angry and grieving at the same time, about how the Ravagers had picked him up out of the blue and he’d had no time to grieve over his mother’s death—

He had to say, he wasn’t enjoying this trip down memory lane - there was a reason he kept those memories buried deep down under layers of arrogance, flirtatiousness and dance moves. Revisiting them brought a whole new wave of issues he wasn’t ready to deal with.

But if he had to compare experiences - the girl, Lena, was handling this much better than he had at first. Of course, he’d been a kid back then which accounted for a lot, actually, and although Yondu held the threat of being served as a Terran buffet over his head for years, he’d never had to fear being thrown out to live on his own right off the bat. As a kid, that probably would have gotten him killed anyway, but if it were an _adult_ , they would probably fare much better on their own.

So she’d be fine, right?

…Why did his head tell him to do what Yondu told him to do, but a little nagging feeling kept insisting that he couldn’t just drop her off and forget about it without feeling any sort of remorse? Goddammit, he thought he’d gotten rid of his conscience years ago, and here it was acting up again.

So much for the getting rid of her in the next spaceport, then. But then what?

Right, bathroom. “Yeah, it’s right there.” He pointed.

Lena followed his directions and after having a bit of trouble with the door (there was no handle in sight), then finding out what you were supposed to press on the panel beside it to open, she entered the bathroom (and closed the door behind her _and_ figured out how to lock it – she was proud of herself). The bathroom itself looked comfortingly normal at first glance, so she decided to pay it no more mind and instead took her time examining her face in the mirror.

Her brown hair was mess, as expected. Her face was also dirty, with a bruise on her cheekbone from where her face had been pressed against the ground when she woke up in that slaver ship, and she looked tired as hell. Exhaling, Lena turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face, cleaning some of the dirt away. Next she was going to try and tame her hair, but the need to pee manifested itself and she decided to not deny it to herself any longer.

After fixing herself up to a somewhat reasonable state, Lena sat down on the closed toilet and pulled her bag on her lap (the one that she had attached herself to ever since finding it on the slaver ship). Opening it and looking through its contents, she made a quick inventory of what she had – her laptop wasn’t in there which was a shame, although she had no idea what she would do with it out in space. There was her phone, probably also useless, an old notebook, her wallet, her taser and some old trinkets. Digging a little more she found – _thank you!_ – her portable toothbrush that she always kept in her bag. She didn’t particularly felt inclined to use it now, but it was always good to know she had it.

_No home, no money, no clothes, but hey, at least I have a toothbrush!_

She tossed it back inside the bag.

 _If only I had a towel I could go hitchhiking_ , she thought dryly.

\---

When Lena got out of the bathroom and sat down across from Peter, and he _still_ didn’t say a word, she felt her patience wearing thin. Dangerously thin. She knew he was avoiding speaking to her because she’d end up asking him to take her home again – or at least that’s what she thought. Or what she thought that he thought – she didn’t feel like breaching that subject again, at least not until her body stopped demanding her attention.

Her stomach growled, proving her point.

She would have been embarrassed when Peter looked up to shoot her a funny glance, but she had already decided three embarrassments ago that it didn’t matter anymore. What she did get was annoyed that _that_ was the only glance he bothered to give her in a while.

“Do you have any food around here?” She asked. _From now on, straight to the point it is._

Peter looked around, walking up to some cabinet-things and opening them. “Maybe--” He stopped. Not only were the cabinets empty but also littered with empty wrappers – proved to be empty when Peter brought his hand down on them. Her eyebrows shot up. “Not.”

Peter made a little strangled noise as he closed the cabinets. Lena’s eyebrows remained up.

“Guess I forgot to do the groceries, heh?” He gave a little laugh at his attempt of a joke.

The possibility of dying by starvation instead of being mangled by an alien just went up by fifty percent - Lena’s eyebrows remained up.

“There’s the Ravagers mess hall, though.” Peter said, after a few seconds of consideration. “Most of the food there is edible—well, _some_ food. I could take you there, shouldn’t be too crowded right now.”

Lena pretended to consider, but it wasn’t like she had any choice at the moment. Nodding, she got up from her seat. “Okay. Lead the way.”

Peter motioned for her to follow, but stopped halfway to the stairs, turning back to look at her. “Just—stay close, okay? Don’t want you to go get food and become the food instead.”

“ _What_?”

“I’m kidding.” He started up the stairs. “Sorta.”

\---

On the way to the mess hall (space cafeteria?), it occurred to her that she still didn’t know what a Ravager was. She pieced together that Peter, as well as everyone else she saw in this ship (the one Peter’s smaller ship was in – was it a mothership? A base in space?), were all Ravagers, seeing they wore similar clothes/uniforms. She also put together that whatever they did, it wasn’t exactly _legal_. They all had this outlaw, space pirates sort of vibe – or maybe she had watched one too many movies and the hunger was starting to get to her head.

Either way, she definitely stuck with Peter as they walked through corridors, dodging all sorts of nasty looks thrown their (her most likely) way. When they entered the mess hall, there was definitely a considerable amount of people inside and Lena felt like _she_ was the alien one as she walked to where the food was.

“Hey, guys!” Peter grinned and waved at a group at a nearby table. They only snarled at him in return. “Nice to see you too.” Peter continued grinning, then turned to her and whispered, “Stay away from those – they tend to get teethy when angry. Which is ninety percent of the time.”

“So, just smile and wave?” She whispered back.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Peter continued smiling at people as they went to get their food - either getting snarls and growls or being completely ignored in return -, except now she could detect the sarcasm in his expression. It didn’t seem he was actually _friends_ with anyone in here, which, sure, it was probably a good thing he wasn’t friends with all these murderous-looking aliens, but also begged the question _where would they sit?_

God, this was high school all over again. And it was  _ridiculous_.

The question was answered, though, when Peter guided her through a maintenance corridor, plates in hand, and then through another series of narrow corridors that were getting narrower the further they walked. Quite frankly, it was freaking her out how completely deserted and off-the-grid they were, and some part of her thought that this was it, he’s finally showing his true face and he brought me here to kill me.

_Dammit, Lena, you know better than to follow strangers into dark alleys. Or corridors._

Lena held on to the fork and knife she had in hand tightly and swore if they had to squeeze through another only-slightly-larger-than-a-feet-long passage, she was going to double back and taker her chances with the evil-eyed aliens back there.

“Where exactly are we going?” She asked warily.

“It’s just… right here—I swear, these looked bigger when I was little.” Peter spoke, squeezing himself through another small passage.

A few squeezes later, they reached a small area that reminded her of the janitor’s closet back in school, except this one had no mops and cleaning products, only various pipes and tubes. How far inside the ship were they?

“I used to come here, a long time ago.” Peter started, settling himself on top of a large metal pipe. “Before I got my own ship – actually,” he cleared his throat, “right after I first got here.”

Her grip on the knife and fork loosened - those would have been stupid weapons anyway - as she realized he probably wasn’t planning on killing her and dumping her body somewhere (she hoped), and she sat down next to him.

“No one really comes here, so…” He shrugged, then started picking at his food. “It seemed like a good idea.”

Lena then started on her food as well, too hungry to ask any questions at the moment. She had to admit that she also felt grateful that she wouldn’t have to deal with any aliens eyeing her at the moment.

Meanwhile beside her, Peter was fighting back another trip down memory lane. Bringing her back here to the place he used to hide out as a child seemed like a sound decision at the time, but now he was starting to regret it. He hadn’t been here in a long time, and it brought back memories that he didn’t care to remember. He didn’t _like_ thinking about his childhood, not when it didn’t involve music, movies or fun stuff and _especially_ not when it involved being a scared little kid in this giant spaceship, still grieving from his mother’s death. He had gotten his own ship for a reason, so he could go out on his own and never look back.

He’d be lying, though, if he said that he hadn’t thought about how awesome would it be, having another Terran around. Someone who could understand his movie references, who would not make fun of his planet or traditions, who would _actually_ appreciate his music. What he hadn’t been expecting is that it would cause him to go spiraling down in his own memories, rekindling that twinge of nostalgia towards his former home that he’d tried so hard to snuff out over the years.

_This is not what I signed up for._

Swallowing the food he had in his mouth, he decided to do what he always did and just not think about it.

So he focused on the awkward silence instead.

\---

Going back to the ship was easier for some reason – maybe it was because she was already fed (despite the food not being what you’d call _gourmet_ – or even tiny-restaurant-in-a-back-alley-worthy). However, the awkward silence still remained over the walk back and she was already fed up with it.

But of course, she had no idea how to stop it. She didn’t know what to say to make it go away, actually, she didn’t know much about anything - and that angered her to no end.

Lena might have been living as a vagrant for the past couple of years of so, but back then she had some sort of control of her life – or at least, she knew where to find food. And shelter. And a job (and not counting the illegal hacking! …if she really wanted). And if things got tough – really tough – she could always crawl back to her ‘family’, dignity be damned.

Here, she had absolutely _nothing_. She didn’t even have the knowledge she prided herself in having about a multitude of things – mostly technological, plenty of street smarts, but way more than an average person. She felt incredibly stupid, and that both annoyed her and angered her and frustrated her at the same time.

The only way she could get any information (or anything at all) was this guy she’d _literally_ just met and who essentially she knew nothing about other than his name. Sure he saved her life, but that had been more of an accident than anything, and now she was completely dependent on him, be either food or shelter or the simple knowledge of how things worked. Dammit, she could take care of herself, that’s what she'd spent the past few years doing!

“There’s a bunk right there, if you want to sleep.” Peter spoke once they were back inside his ship. “I guess you can find some blankets around--”

Her patience snapped. “I don’t need you to baby me.”

Peter looked stunned for a moment, but finally _really_ looked at her – he’d been throwing her over-the-shoulders, indirect and looking-but-not-really looks ever since they went to eat – and simply stared. He didn’t seem to be speaking anytime soon, and the annoying silence came back.

“I _am_ grateful, for you rescuing me.” She started. If she was going to get this out, she was going to get it all out. “But if I’m just going to be a burden you might as well drop me off like you were supposed to and send me on my away.” She crossed her arms, finally breaking eye contact. “I’ll figure myself out from there. That’s… what I do.” She finished lamely, but her resolve didn’t waver.

Lena left everything behind once, she could do it again. She knew she could.

Peter looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t know  _what_. The familiar awkward silence resumed - again - and Lena felt like bolting out of the room just to escape it. It was either that or screaming in frustration.

Peter grunted once, breaking the silence. “You know, usually I’m very good with women.”

Lena raised an eyebrow.

“Okay. Alright.” He nodded. After a pause, he took a deep breath and spoke again. “Is there anything you can do?”

Lena frowned, wondering where he was getting at, and shot him a confused look.

“I mean, if there’s anything you can _do_ , any skills, or abilities or…” He waved his hands in front of him. “Yondu won’t mind you being here as long as you make yourself useful.”

Useful she could do. She had skills. She could do wonders with a computer (not an alien one, although she had never tried – you never know), but what use exactly could her skills be for them? “I don’t know.” _Guess it's time to find out who these people are._ “What exactly do _you_ do?”

Peter cleared his throat, slightly taken aback. “We are in the business of… acquiring… things.”

“Acquiring?”

“Yes.”

“As in… illegally acquiring?”

“…Possibly, yes.”

_Aha._

“Do you have any problem with that?”

She internally snorted. “I wish I could say I did. Kinda lost the right to that a while ago.”

Peter tilted his head to the side, his eyes narrowing as he studied her in a new light. “So, any skills? Anything even remotely useful?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m good with computers.”

“How good?”

“Very good.” She considered how much she should tell him but decided _screw it_. “I got kicked out of college for hacking into where I wasn’t supposed to.” That should give him an idea.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Alright.” He nodded. “We can work with that. You don’t want to be babied, I would _much_ rather _not_ have to baby you – let’s be honest -, we can… come to some sort of agreement.”

She nodded. _Alright, now we ’re getting somewhere._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, now we're finally getting somewhere! Fun things! Friendship! Yay! I hope!  
> Also this chapter came out longer than intended, but I guess it's to make up for the fact that I'll be away until next year (January, don't worry) so no new chapters until then :c  
> Actually I should have made it longer now that I think about it... Oh well. Hopefully I'll be able to get some writing done meanwhile so there'll be more chapters as soon as I return c:


	5. Being Nosy is a Specialty

When she woke up, the sun was not bathing her face in its warmth. Actually, it was pretty cold, and while Lena had the habit of leaving the curtains open before going to bed so she’d wake up with the sun, the window would always be shut. Blinking awake, she slowly became aware of her surroundings, including the fact that last night’s dream was, in fact, _not_ a dream at all.

_I’m really in a spaceship. Okay then._

Sitting up, Lena glanced at the bunk next to the one she’d slept in and noticed that Peter wasn’t in it, but the sheets were all rumpled so she guessed he was already up – which made her wonder how long had she been sleeping. She wouldn’t be surprised if she found out she’d slept twenty four hours straight with how tired she’d been.

Rubbing a hand over her face, Lena stifled a yawn as she got up and stretched. Looking around, she took notice that Peter was nowhere in sight, as well as other details she had overlooked before (she had kinda just plopped down on the bunk and passed out right away, no time for admiring the decoration). Her eyes eventually fell upon the wall of the opposite bunk, curiosity peaked as recognized the thing in it.

_Is that a tape deck? With an actual cassette tape?_

Her curiosity got the better of her and she moved closer, putting a knee on Peter’s bunk for balance and leaning down to inspect it closer. From up close she could read the writing on the tape – _Awesome Mix Vol. 1_. She wondered what was such an old thing doing in a spaceship in the first place, and if every spaceship had it or had Peter put it there? Guess she’d have to ask him, although she was getting really tired of having to ask him about everything.

Moving back from the tape deck, she decided to pay a closer look at the rest of the ‘decoration’ – there were a bunch of stickers decorating the wall, ones that looked suspiciously from Earth and a bit childish if she had to say so herself, as well as a handful of children's trading cards stuck around the tape deck. There was even a little troll doll there, and Lena was one hundred percent sure now that those were all memorabilia from Earth that Peter must have kept (it was either that, or a kid lived here, and she was pretty sure that was not the case). However, she couldn't help but noticing that the entire wall seemed to be stuck in the past century (despite it being on a spaceship and all) and the question _when was the last time Peter had even stepped foot on Earth?_ crossed her mind once again.

Filling that question away for later, Lena backed away from the bunk and decided to find the man in question.

Last night (or day? Afternoon? Was there even such thing in space?), she and Peter had come to some sort of agreement. It wasn’t much, but it was a start – she had a purpose now at least, instead of just going aimlessly about the place and having to rely on someone for nearly every single thing. They had agreed that he wouldn’t drop her off on the next spaceport to fend for herself, but she would have to make herself useful. While he himself couldn’t take her back home (although she had the nagging suspicion it was more of a matter of _wouldn’t_ instead of couldn’t), he also promised that he’d ask around to see if there was anyone on their way to Earth so they could, uh, give her a lift? She wasn’t sure about that part, other than the fact that _she had to make herself useful in the meantime._

That was the tricky part.

All of her abilities were computer related - and she had no idea how alien computers worked.

\---

Lena ended up taking some time to freshen herself up in the bathroom before going up the stairs to find Peter. She spotted him with his upper body inside a hatch in the wall, doing who knows what (metallic sounds suggested mechanical tinkering). He managed a glance at her when he heard her approach and dragged himself out of the hatch, wiping his hands on his pants in the process.

“Hey.” He said. “Nice to see you back in the land of the living.”

She frowned. “How long was I out?”

“Enough for me to go out and restock the ship _and_ fix this leak on the left engine.” He smirked. “Almost thought you’d gone into a coma or something.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

Dropping a tool he’d been holding on a tool box nearby, Peter closed the hatch and turned back to her. “And now that you’re awake, I expect you not to blow up the ship while I’m out.”

“Out?” She asked. “Didn’t you say you already restocked the ship?” _Unless restocking the ship meant something else._

Peter made a face as he went to grab his jacket from where it had been apparently tossed before. “Yondu calls. Don’t wanna make him wait in case he’s in a bad mood – you just might get skewered.”

Lena tilted her head to the side. “Does he really skewer people?”

Peter snorted, turning away as he put on his jacket. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

After Peter left, Lena was left standing awkwardly in the middle of an empty spaceship. She wasn’t sure what to do next – she didn’t have any pressing needs at the moment, but as a jab of hunger surged up she decided to go in search of food. _Well, he did say he’d restocked it, didn’t he?_

There were no Twinkies lying around (sometimes her only food source whenever she found herself busy or distracted writing code on the computer) but there was some edible stuff (somewhat) that at least made her feel sated.

And then she was left once again with nothing to do.

Lena began spinning left and right on the seat down in the common area, her eyes roaming about and distractedly taking in the details. There were only so many things that could keep her distracted before the overly curious part of her broke free and started poking around. And hey, it took all ten minutes before she went from distracted to focused, and her eyes began dissecting every single thing in sight as she tried to guess how they worked. Then it took another five minutes before she started inching towards the big screen that stood nearby.

\---

Peter found her there about an hour later.

He was already in a bad mood after dealing with Yondu, tired of being constantly threatened and treated like a nuisance, so when he spotted her messing with his computer he instantly became suspicious.

“What are you doing?” He asked warily.

Hand frozen halfway to the screen, Lena turned her head to him, startled. “I’m, uh-- learning.”

Peter raised an eyebrow.

Lena stared back in return, deciding that _enough being the clueless victim_. She was taking back the control in her life – even if it meant right now standing up to the guy who had _saved_ her life. Maybe she had to rethink that strategy. “You said I had to make myself useful, right? I can't do that if I don't know _how_.” She waved a hand towards the screen. “Hence, me learning how.”

Peter narrowed his eyes as he moved closer to inspect the screen. Why was it so green? “And?”

“And... Well, I’ve made progress. So far I figured out how to change the color scheme - it's kind of a bright green right now--” At Peter's indignant expression, she continued, “which I can revert back - and I found the internet. Or something like it anyway. Also, I might have - accidentally - sent a message to someone. You probably should take a look at that.” She shot him a sheepish look.

Peter's mouth was opened slightly and his eyes were narrowed. He _wanted_ to say something, but his repertoire of comebacks was mostly flirting, annoying people, and bullshitting his way out of things so he decided to only give her a warning look. Purely because he wanted her to be warned, of course. Not because he couldn’t think of a good comeback.

Peter shook his head, grabbing her extended wrist and led her away from the screen. “Okay, that's enough. Hopefully you didn't mess with the navigation system because we're really going to need it right now.”

“What for?” She asked, part confused, part curious.

Peter sighed. “Yondu - he's still angry about--” and Peter realized she _didn’t_ know what he was angry about, or maybe that he even was angry. Actually, didn’t she only meet Yondu once? Peter briefly wondered if he should tell her that Yondu was angry at him because he picked her up, and use it as leverage if he ever needs any favors. ‘ _I pick you up and see what I get?’_ or something of the sort. Well, sure, _technically_ Yondu was mad at him for ditching the Ravagers during a job, cutting off communications and going to do his own thing, but that’s what led him to finding her so it counts, right? “He needs me to drop something off for him, and I should probably do it soon or he'll get even angrier.” Letting go of her once they reached the base of the stairs, Peter continued, “Unless you plan on staying here all by yourself--”

“Uh-- no, it's fine - I'll just, uh, go with you. If that's okay.” It better be, because she wasn’t letting him leave her on her own. Lena would much rather not have to worry about space pirates that might want to eat her for a while longer.

Peter motioned her up the stairs. “Then up you go.”

\---

“So... What is it?” Lena asked.

Peter briefly glanced at her before returning to the controls. “What is what?”

Lena began fiddling with her seatbelt - _how do you fasten this thing?_ \- as Peter set up the course for where they were going. Wherever that was. “The... Thing. This thing where we're going.”

Peter didn't take his eyes off the screen this time. “It's a job. Get money - give it to Yondu - he doesn't kill me. Ravager business.”

She pursued her lips as she thought about how she would approach the next question. “... Is it illegal?”

“Depends on what legal system you’re talking about.”

“The local one.”

“Possibly.”

_And there goes my plan to start an honest life…_

After a few seconds of awkward silence, her curiosity got the better of her. “Where is it?”

Peter raised his eyebrows and shot her a teasing glance. “Oh, it's a planet right outside the Nova Empire. Don't think you've ever heard of it.”

Lena shot him a look right back. _Well, no shit_.

Her eyes narrowed as she realized he was being a smartass.

She thought about asking what this Nova Empire was but considering that Peter didn't seem to be feeling very helpful at the moment she kept quiet, choosing instead to focus on getting her seat belt fastened up. She felt slightly giddy at the prospect of stepping on a different planet because, sure, she’d already been on a couple of spaceships (in _space_ ), but actually stepping out on a planet that wasn’t her own?

She felt her inner sci-fi fan geek out.

\--

And then it turned out Peter didn't let her get off the ship.

“Why not?” She'd asked.

“I already have enough to worry about without having to worry about _you_.” He'd said. “Stay.”

After calling out indignantly that she wasn't a dog, she resigned herself to waiting in the common area again. With nothing to do, again.

That's when she found the table computer.

The screen was relatively smaller than the one right in front of it, but because of its location on the table it resembled a lot more a normal computer (much to her relief) and it allowed her to sit down and type away to her heart's content, just like she used to do back home.

And again, it was there that Peter found her a couple of hours later when he returned (slightly out of breath and with a forming bruise on his cheek).

“Mission accomplished.” Peter spoke with a smirk, throwing down a device thing on the table she was at as if she was supposed to know what it was. “In barely no time.”

She looked up with a raised eyebrow, meeting his gaze. “I would say so, but it's not like I'd have any idea...” She probably shouldn't have taken pleasure at his deflated expression - but hey, that's what you get for being a smartass.

Turning back to the screen, partly faking no interest, partly caught up with what she was working on, she heard Peter shuffle behind her.

“What are you doing there?” He asked. “Not changing my color scheme again, are you?”

“I changed it back actually— but, ah, I'm playing Pong.”

Peter's eyebrows scrunched up in confusion—and some recognition. “Pong?”

“Yeah. The game?” She motioned to the screen where two little bars were hitting a pixelated dot to each other.

Peter's eyes widened. “The Terran game?” At her nod, he continued, albeit a bit more excitedly. “Where did you get it?!”

She wasn't sure whether she was more confused at his excitement over a 1970-something video game (imagine if he saw Wii tennis), or weirded out by the invasion of personal space (he had shoved his face closer to the screen, which meant leaning one hand against the table and the other on her chair, nearly shoving her out of the way).

“I made it. Just now.” She explained. “This was an exercise in college – programming old school games - and it's pretty simple. I just had to learn the programming language...” And she trailed off when she noticed he was more preoccupied in figuring out how to play it and wasn’t listening to a word she was saying.  _Go figure._

Somehow he ended up convincing her to play several best of three matches against each other when playing against himself got boring. She had to say, playing Pong in space was a very strange development. Playing Pong in space with an excitable manchild was even stranger. (Was it too early to call him a manchild? Maybe - she'd wait a little longer to make up her mind about that. But the way that he shouted _Ha! I win!_ or any variant every time he scored wasn't helping his case any.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry for the delay, I kinda got caught up with things :c But here it is! I feel like we're finally getting somewhere with the story, or at least starting to develop a relationship so we can move on to friendshippy things and other shenanigans. So yay!  
> Next update will come sooner, and meanwhile I'm also gonna be posting this story on ff.net. I hope you're enjoying so far (or better, I hope this is not too disappointing heh) c:


	6. Business and Pleasure

“You know, leather was never really my thing.”

Arms spread out, Lena looked down at herself and her shiny new outfit. Red leather jacket, red leather pants – surprisingly comfortable, but not her first choice of clothes. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was her _only_ choice of clothing at the moment.

Sometime before (between landing on a different planet and going back to the Ravager’s main ship), it had occurred to her that she was still wearing the clothes from the day she’d been abducted, and they weren’t getting any _cleaner_. After bringing up the subject to Peter, he managed to find a spare Ravager uniform for her to use that miraculously fit her (“ _Trust me, they’ve got all sorts of sizes and shapes in there_ ,” Peter had said with a laugh), but apparently they only came in red (leather).

Peter looked up from the table computer – from where he’d been playing Snake ever since she finished programming the game – and gave her an appraising look. “Can’t say it looks bad on you.” He said and went back to the screen, only to curse under his breath when he saw he’d lost the game.

If that was an attempt at flirting it was a shabby one at that – saying it while distracted by the game really kills the mood.

Brushing it aside (whatever it was), Lena crossed her arms and sat down on the table as the only seat was occupied. She had half a mind to wave a hand in front of Peter’s face when he didn’t even look up as she sat down, too engrossed on the game. “Where to next?” She decided asking to get his attention instead.

After a few moments, Peter seemingly gave up playing after another game over and leaned back on the seat, finally focusing his attention on her. “I’ve got a thing to do on Xandar.” He said, then spun around and pushed himself off the seat, walking towards his bunk while calling out, “Auto pilot’s set up, so just kick back and wait.”

Lena heaved an internal sigh – she was getting bored of waiting all the time – and was about to vocalize her protests, or maybe just tell him that this time she refused to be cooped up in the ship this time when suddenly—

_Is that music?_

“What is that?” She asked, a bit rhetorically. It was music, for sure, and it was vaguely familiar – she’d definitely heard it before. After a moment of confusion, her mind went back to the cassette tape she’d seen a while ago and then it all clicked in place.

“Spirit in the Sky, Norman Greenbaum, 1969.” Peter answered as he walked back to the common area, shuffling around and doing weird dance moves in time with the music that Lena chose to ignore for the time being.

Lena jumped down from the table and approached the tape deck – on closer inspection it actually looked like a genuine, working cassette tape player, not just a decoration made to look like one. Most probably where the music was coming from. “Earth music?”

“Hm-hm.”

“But on a cassette tape?”

He looked at her with an indignant expression. “And what’s wrong with that?”

She crossed her arms. “No one even uses these things anymore. Ever heard of iPods? Hell, even CDs?” She finished, tilting one head to the side with an amused smile. _A spaceman that owns a spaceship and still uses cassette tapes? You’d think he’d be a little more advanced than that._

Peter put his hands on hips defensively. “Well, that’s what I had with me. When I—left Earth.”

“What, in the eighties?”

Peter’s face spoke volumes, looking like a deer caught in headlights—but he only shrugged with fake disinterest and turned away from her.

Her eyebrows shot up – he left Earth in the eighties? _1980s_? That was far longer ago than she’d expected, although now that she thought about it, she hadn’t really been expecting anything at all. In fact, she hadn’t even given any thought about that before, and it brought along a different set of questions, such as, “How old _were_ you?”

He opened his mouth to speak, whether to tell the truth or bullshit his way out (he did that, apparently) she would never know, as a beeping noise coming from the computer interrupted him before he could say anything else. Turning away from her far too quickly for her liking – but not before making a shushing noise – he pressed a button and a large green figure was displayed on the screen.

Putting on his business façade (a smile that Lena would soon come to recognize as one that promised a lot of bullshitting), Peter turned towards the displeased looking, green mass of an alien on the screen. “Hey, Zu’hen! How’s it hanging?”

The figure on the screen didn’t return the smile, the creases and wrinkles on his skin only crinkled further. “Peter Quill.” There was a displeased noise on the other side. “I take it you are on your way to Xandar as we speak?”

“Of course! You’ll be holding your package on your delicate, murky green hands in no time!”

“I _eagerly_ await.” The green guy deadpanned. “I am sending the coordinates to our meeting place to you as we speak. I trust you’ll be able to find it without a problem.”

“I will. See you soon, pal.” And with that, Peter pressed a button and ended the call, turning back to Lena. “He’s not as bad as he looks, I swear – but the _smell…_ I'm pretty sure that guy’s breath can knock out an entire Badoon army.” He finished off with a laugh.

Lena narrowed her eyes at his quick change of subject and considered going back to their previous topic of conversation but decided against it – she wouldn’t just forget about it, though, she was simply waiting until another opportunity came up.

\---

Xandar.

Capital of the Nova Empire.

Orbiting around three suns.

Looks something straight out of a sci-fi movie.

Needless to say, Lena was in awe.

“Lena, come on.” Peter pressed her on. “I’m on a tight schedule here.”

He tried to tug her forward but she slapped his hand away. “Just—give me a second, alright? I need a moment for slack-jawed staring here.”

He frowned. “Why?”

Now she was the one to give him an incredulous look. “Because—space! First time on another planet! I think I’m allowed some sightseeing.”

“It’s not that big a deal…”

“Well, I’m sorry Mr. I’ve-been-in-space-since-the-eighties, not all of us have had that privilege.”

“You call that privilege, I call that life.” He pulled on her arm and she reluctantly went with him. “Come on, Earth Girl, you can sightsee _after_ we’re done.” He paused. “If we’re not being chased out.”

“…Is there a possibility of being chased out?” She carefully asked.

He grinned and slung an arm around her shoulders. “There’s always a possibility of being chased out. No use worrying about that now – let’s go.”

She raised her eyebrows. “And is there a possibility of a _warning_ if we’re going to be chased out?”

“If you see angry people running towards you, waving guns – run.”

“Wonderful.” She deadpanned.

\---

It didn’t take them long to reach what was obviously one of the shadiest parts of town – while the streets before were well-lit in the night and the population diverse (she could swear she saw more alien species here than in all Star Wars movies) but mostly harmless, the alleyway they had walked into at the moment was dark and shadowy, making the already hostile-looking individuals walking about seem even more intimidating. Sneaking a glance at Peter, Lena noticed that if he felt any uneasiness of any sort like she was feeling, he didn’t show. In fact, he was walking rather confidently and it made her wonder whether he was really brave or really stupid – and it made her questions her life choices. Again.

_It’s not like life has given me much choice anyway._

Peter guided them to a decent-looking building squished between other shady-looking ones. The entrance actually looked like a (rather futuristic) nightclub, and as they stepped inside, it _did_ turn out to be a shady futuristic nightclub.

“May I help you?” An alien lady (she assumed) that stood near the back spoke once they approached her. Unlike other people, she was dressed in an immaculate fashion and stood uninterested near a computer terminal, away from the crowd.

“Yes.” Peter grinned at her and leaned on the computer terminal, trying to appear casual (and maybe flirty? Lena could only guess, to be honest it only looked ridiculous to her). “I’m here to meet with someone – they’re expecting me.”

“I see.” The woman shot a look at the spot Peter was leaning on as if passive-aggressively asking him to remove himself. He didn’t get the hint. “And what name should I look for in the list?”

With a confident smile, he spoke. “Try Star-Lord.”

At the same time the woman shot him another passive-aggressive look (this time of the incredulous variety), Lena turned to him with a raised eyebrow. Peter seemed oblivious to both, and it was only when the woman let out a near-imperceptible exasperated sigh (she must have a lot of experience with dealing with troublesome clients) and turned to her computer that Peter noticed the look Lena was blatantly giving him.

He frowned. “What?” His tone of confusion made Lena’s other eyebrow joined its twin. “It’s what they call me.”

She tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowing. “Do they?”

Peter opened his mouth but ended up only clearing his throat awkwardly. “…yes.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman spoke up, interrupting whatever retort Lena had come up with, “there is no _Star-Lord_ in the list.”

As Peter’s face fell, Lena had to bite her cheek to keep from grinning. Part of her felt bad for laughing at his miserable expression, but if she had to judge from the look on his face she’d say he had already been expecting dejection.

He sighed. “Try Quill.”

The woman returned to her computer after shooting him yet another passive-aggressive irritated look.

There was a pause as the woman tapped away at her computer and Peter looked anywhere but at Lena, no matter how hard she tried to meet his eyes.

“So they call you Star-Lord?” Lena had to ask, hoping to get him to look at her but not even bothering to hide the teasing tone in her voice.

Without even a glance, he hissed out a sharp “Quiet.”

“Yes, there is a Mr. Quill on the list.” The woman spoke, shifting her attention away from the computer. “If you could please accompany me, I’ll escort you to the meeting room. No company allowed.” She finished with a meaningful look in Lena’s direction

Lena wasn’t sure what made aliens think she was Peter’s _company_ , but she was getting really fed up with it. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about it at the moment and had to resign herself to waiting for Peter to finish his business.

“Wait here, don’t go anywhere.” Peter had said as the alien woman led him away. He also felt the need to call out a “Stay!” as he walked away, which prompted Lena to mutter indignantly that she wasn’t a dog. Again.

 _I’m not some lost little puppy following you around_ , she almost said out loud but stopped suddenly. _Am I?_

She shook her head. “Give it time.” She muttered, sighing and scanning the nightclub for a place she could sit and wait undisturbed.

\---

It took Peter about half an hour to come back out. She would never admit it, but when she spotted the now familiar red coat stepping out of the backroom she felt a wave of relief flooding through her. She couldn’t help it - despite managing to find a secluded spot away from the crowd good enough that no one looked her way, her wariness grew by the minute. It was her paranoia acting up again, although this time she felt entitled to it given the situation.

As Peter approached her, she forced herself into a more casual stance. “We good to go?” She asked, her eyes flitting to Peter’s empty hands and wondering if he’d been successful or not.

“Go? We’re not going anywhere.”

Lena frowned. “Didn’t you do… whatever it was that you had to do?”

“Yes, but--” He slung an arm over her shoulder, dragging her out of her comfy zone and into the noisy crowd. “ _Now_ is the fun part.” At her confused frown, he continued. “Time for a drink!”

“Oh.” _Of course._

Peter let go of her once they reached the bar, leaning on the counter and signalling the bartender. He ended up ordering some kind of alien drink that she had never heard of, making her feel even more displaced than she already was. _He couldn’t have just ordered a beer, could he?_

“Is this what you do?” Lena asked. “Do business, get drunk afterwards?”

“Why, is that a problem?”

“No, it’s a…” She shrugged. “Valid life style.”

He grinned. “So, what’re you gonna get?”

Lena opened her mouth to speak but stopped, realizing that they most likely did _not_ have the same kind of drinks she was used to back-– back on her home planet (that was going to take a while to get used to). “I don’t suppose they serve beer here, do they?”

Peter shook his head. “Don’t think so, no.”

“Whiskey? Cocktails? Tequila shots?”

“You know what--” He signalled the bartender again. “Why don’t you get the same thing as me. Terran-safety guaranteed, I promise.”

\---

“I thought this was safe!” Lena rasped out quite _painfully_ through the agony of a burning throat.

It only took one sip of Peter’s _supposedly_ Terran-safe drink to make Lena lose faith in Peter’s decision making skills altogether. The thing burned, falling like hot lava down her throat and she could feel it sinking down on her stomach in a non-pleasant way (and that was _extremely_ understating it). _Oh my God, it burns!_

Peter’s only response was to laugh – it might have been revenge for her teasing him about the Star-Lord thing, but she was too focused on the burning sensation to get mad at him for it. “It is safe!”

“It burns!”

“But that’s the thing!”

“What, the burning?”

Peter didn’t answer, instead he took a swig of his drink, causing his eyes to immediately screw shut and his face scrunch up, hand coming down on the bar hard as he bent over, groaning loudly. Well, at least she wasn’t the only one to have a severe reaction – it helped ease her embarrassment at being caught off-guard by such a strong drink (understatement).

Peter let out another loud groan before he slowly recomposed himself. Shaking his head as he straightened himself out, he offered her a dazed grin. “See? It gets better afterwards.”

Lena didn’t buy it. “And then you drink more and it burns all over again.”

“Nooo.” He picked up his drink again and brought it up to his mouth. “It goes away after the third sip or so.”

“Right.” Lena watched incredulously as he swallowed more of the burning liquid, repeating the whole ‘pained face and loud groans’ thing from before.

“Try it.” He offered (after the pain had stopped).

“Nuh-uh.”

“ _Try it._ ”

“No! I don’t trust your judgement anymore.” And probably should have never done that in the first place.

He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment as if assessing her, then turned back to his own drink with an indifferent shrug. “Fine then.” He paused. “Chicken.”

As he took another sip, it was her turn to narrow her eyes at him. _Oh no, he did not._ “I’m sorry?”

Peter shuddered to shake off the burning sensation on his throat before answering. “You heard me. _Chicken_.” He shot her a pointed look that screamed _I dare you._

_God, how much childish could he be?_

Despite all the warnings in her head telling her _not_ to stoop down to his level, her pride had already been hurt far too much in this whole space extravaganza for her _not_ to take up the challenge.

Feigning disinterest, Lena turned away from him and faced the counter, Peter doing the same. After a few moments spent in silence, she began lightly tapping her fingers against the counter, slowly inching closer towards her own drink—

And she wasn't sure what made her do it, but her hand quickly grabbed the drink and brought it up, taking one _long_ swing and the next thing she knew was immediately regretting every decision she had made so far. Peter had to bring a hand to his mouth to muffle the surprised snort and he stared at her wide-eyed as she flailed around, feeling the effects of the drink.

“What the hell! You’re not supposed to drink that much at once!” He yelled, surprised but infinitely amused.

 _You could have told me that before!_ She wanted to say, but she couldn’t get the words out through the burning pain. Peter even had the indelicacy to laugh at her, and she had to settle on simply glaring at him when words wouldn’t come out.

Coughing violently, she banged a hand on her chest as she tried to calm the burning pain and Peter could only stand by awkwardly, hand hovering over her shoulder without knowing what to do.

Hesitantly, he brought his hand down to pat her back as she miserably rested her forehead against the counter. “You alright there?” He asked, retreating his hand and leaning his elbows on the bar. Lena’s only response was to groan loudly.

Peter snorted and took another sip, patting her back again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! There was something with this chapter that just wouldn't come out, but in the end I like how it turned out c: Story-wise, we're getting things moving hell yeah
> 
> This chapter also might have taken a while because I kept looking it over again and again to make sure there were no errors, and on that note, if anyone finds any typos or grammatical/factual errors on any of the chapters, do say so! I'd appreciate it! And on that same note, I went back to last chapter and corrected the fact that it's Nova Empire instead of Xandarian empire (my mistake, oops).
> 
> Hope you're enjoying!


	7. Interlude: Cosmic Hangover

Not for the first time this week, Lena woke up with little recollection of where she was. Most of the times, however, it was due to the fact that she still hadn't fully come to terms with the fact that she was in space, but on this day in particular, a killer hangover was added to the mix of what promised to be the beginning of a day full of embarrassment and regret.

Slowly blinking awake, Lena pressed a hand against her forehead in a futile attempt of soothing the headache that was thumping away at her brain. She didn't have a lot of memories of the night before, which most likely meant that she'd drank, and  _a lot_. Turning her head to the bunk beside hers, she saw that her 'space buddy' was already up, so she craned her neck to search for him at the common area and spotted him drinking from a mug and lazily swiping at the computer. Gathering enough strength, Lena pushed herself off the bed and groaned when the headache was only made worse.

"How's the hangover?" Peter called from the common area, a teasing tone in his voice.

Lena turned to stare at him with a blank expression, except she was pretty sure she looked as miserable as she felt. "What hangover." She said dryly  _and_  sarcastically at the same time. She felt it was an accomplishment (considering the state she was in).

Lena ran a hand through her brown hair as she walked towards the kitchen space (which was essentially a small section of the common area, but it had food – hence kitchen) in search of that weird space coffee she was introduced to a couple of days ago.

"You guys don't have some kind of miraculous cure for hangover here in space, do you?" She asked as she poured herself some space coffee.

"If we had one, don't you think I would have taken it?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, you seem awfully cheery."

"Well, you know," Peter grinned, "maybe I'm just that good."

Lena didn't even bother to hide the eye roll – but decided to save on those when it didn't agree with her headache.

"Or maybe… You're just a lightweight." Peter added.

She was the tiniest bit offended – she could hold her drink , thank you very much. "I'm  _not_."

"I mean, really, we're not that different. Just two hot blooded Americans – there's no big secret here."

Lena frowned. "I'm Canadian."

Now it was his turn to frown. "What?"

"I'm  _Canadian_. I told you – I said I was from Toronto." She really did, she wasn't sure when she'd told him but she was sure it had come up at least once.

He scrunched up his nose. "…Isn't that in America?"

"…No, that's in Canada."

"You sure?"

Lena shot him an ugly look that shut him up on the spot.

Peter exhaled and shrugged, turning away. "I was never good with geography anyway. There's a reason why they invented the navigation system, you know." He finished, jerking a thumb towards the computer screen.

"So disoriented people like you don't end up in the middle of a black hole by accident?"

"I'm  _perfectly_  oriented, thank you very much."

Lena looked away, hiding a smirk behind her mug. "Hm-hm." She hummed to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was short (but it was intentional, I swear). Consider this sort of a drabble/oneshot thing that didn't fit either chapter, and also to hold you off until I can finish writing the actual next chapter c: And since I'm probably gonna have more of those sometime later, I'm calling them Interludes. c:
> 
> Also can I just say that it's really hard to get a good idea of the layout of the Milano? I'm mostly just making up the bathroom and the kitchen space, but I try to stick with what I could map out from watching the movie (for instance, no there doesn't seem to be any separate rooms other than the two bunks we see, and it makes me wonder what exactly are the Guardians' sleeping arrangements, and y'know, general arrangements. I mean, it is a pretty small ship. I hope there really is a proper bathroom in there somewhere).


	8. Between Brave and Stupid

If someone had told him a couple of months ago that he’d be having a human woman, from _Terra_ of all places, crashing in his ship, he’d probably—well, he didn’t know anyone who could have told him something like that.

But if someone _had_ told him, he probably would have laughed. And, probably, he would have thought they’d be getting really _friendly_ by now – or at the very least, there’d be some heavy flirting, after all, his flirting skills weren’t too shabby (he was very proud of them, actually, no matter what anyone says), and it wasn’t every day he’d meet someone from the same species as his, let alone from the same planet.

But alas, the circumstances (and the woman in question) were far more different than anything he could have envisioned, and he’d ended up with this smart-mouthed, tech-savvy roommate who was starting to become a lot more bossy than he was comfortable with.

Peter sighed. “What are you doing there anyway, that you’re taking up both screens?”

Lena briefly looked up from the table screen, to Peter’s face, then to the bigger screen (that was currently displaying a handful of messages that Peter did not fully understand), then back to the table computer. “Things.”

“You’re not breaking my computer, are you?”

She snorted. “Of course not – give me some credit.” She glanced at him again. “Besides – didn’t you say you had business to do? Go do business.” She made a shooing gesture with one hand.

“What are you, my boss?”

“No, but I really can’t have you whining on my ear constantly while I’m trying to optimize your system. You said I had to make myself useful, now _you_ go make yourself useful.” She paused, typing away for a couple of seconds. “Also, Yondu is going to be pissed at you if you don’t get the package back in time.”

At the mention of Yondu, Peter straightened up as he remembered the time limit he’d been given to ‘acquire’ (some would call it _stealing_ ) this package and deliver it to the Ravager leader. There was no hurry as of now, but it’s always better to do it sooner in case of complications arising.

He exhaled. “Fine.” Grabbing his coat, Peter turned away to leave as he shrugged it on. “Just don’t break my ship while I’m out.”

“I’m not going to _break_ your ship…” Lena muttered. As Peter was climbing up the stairs, Lena called out, “Also don’t forget to ask around about the whole hitching a ride thing!”

Peter grumbled a little – just because he’d kinda – completely – forgot to ask about it that time on Xandar, she’d been constantly reminding him ever since. And most of the time, it had no results - _no one_ ever went anywhere near Terra because it was Asgardian airspace, and no reasonable amount of units could convince them otherwise. The only ones who would venture there were the less trustworthy ones, like, say, those slave traders, but he had a feeling Lena wouldn’t be very partial in getting a ride with the ones that abducted her in the first place.

\---

Lena glanced at the computer clock for the third time in the last half hour. It wasn’t set in any unit of measurement of time that she’d ever heard of, but she’d been looking at it long enough to know that quite some time had passed since Peter left. She’d estimate at least two hours, but it could have been longer.

Not that she was getting worried.

But it was getting increasingly hard to concentrate on other things when her mind kept wondering if Peter had run into trouble of any sort – or worse, if he was coming back at all.

It wasn’t like he would just abandon her there (with his own ship), and it might have been irrational on her part to assume the worst, but considering his line of work was mostly illegal and it involved guns – her mind kept wandering into worst case scenarios. Sure, this thing Peter went to do might just be taking a while. Or, sure, he might already be done with it and was just chilling on some bar or something. Or maybe… Something went wrong and he was now dead in a ditch somewhere.

Lena furiously rubbed a hand over her face – next time, she’d make him give her an estimated time before she started assuming she was stranded alone in space.

\---

Another hour passed. Or maybe more, she wasn’t quite sure, but what she was sure of is that she was getting restless and sitting still was no longer an option.

Getting up from her seat, she stretched her limbs and glanced up at the stairs. At that moment, she was stuck in a very heated debate with herself in which one part of her told her to sit and wait while the other part demanded that she go out there and drag him back and make him stop worrying her.

That part won.

Lena determinedly made her way out of the ship, leaving no time for second guessing herself. Her resolve did falter a bit once she actually stepped foot outside – the sight that greeted her was not like any of the other planets she’d been on. If she thought they’d been questionable before, this one was downright _unscrupulous._ It was what she’d seen in the Ravager mothership, except _ten times worse_. Every single being in here looked like they wanted to murder her or something of the sort, and for some reason unknown to herself, that only made her worry for _Peter_ worsen.

 _Dammit, Peter_ , she cursed in her head for what was probably the hundredth time in an hour.

She stood near the entrance to the Milano trying to look casual (don’t let them know you’re afraid, right?), but all her nerves were on edge. She’d stormed out of the ship due to some reckless decision making, and now that she was out here, _she had no idea what to do._

She didn’t know where Peter was, or how to find him. She didn’t know how to protect herself if worst came to worst. What was she thinking?

Resolve nearly shattered completely, Lena turned back around to the ship but stopped in her tracks, and just as quickly turned back. Then she turned away again, and then back, as she tried to make up her mind on whether or not it was a good idea to go search for Peter. _He’s probably fine,_ she tried to reassure herself. She didn’t feel very reassured.

The Terran stood there for quite a while, weighing the pros and cons of the situation. The people around her had started to disperse, and suddenly she was alone in front of the Milano.

Then she heard shouting. Angry shouting.

She didn’t even think twice about bolting forward, but it was only when her mind recognized one of the voices in the commotion that she ran even faster until she reached the source.

Hiding in the shadows between two ships were two figures – one of which she immediately recognized as Peter.

And he was the one on the ground, while the other – a blue-skinned alien – hovered above him. While holding a gun.

_Easy job my ass – for fuck’s sakes, Peter!_

Not willing to rush forward without a plan this time, Lena quickly ducked for cover – the other guy had his back towards her so he didn’t spot her quick dash behind some crates. She stayed crouched for a moment, trying to think of any plan, _anything_ that she could do in this situation that wouldn’t end with her and Peter shot or worse. Nothing came to mind.

Carefully, she peeked around the corner of the crate and watched as the guy waved his gun around as he made threats (he didn’t have the gun particularly trained on Peter, which was kind of sloppy on his part and incredibly fortunate for her. That was probably the only opening she was going to get.)

“—think I’d let some lowly Ravager steal from _me?_ ” She caught what the guy was saying. He was still waving his gun around in a threatening fashion, looking quite full of himself.

“Kinda hoped you wouldn’t find out…” Peter remarked with that same grin he always wore despite being in disadvantage – except it looked much weaker now, especially because he had a large gash and trail of blood down his cheek.

“You did, didn’t you?” The other guy said. “Let me teach ya a couple of things about breaking into _my home, my--_ ” Lena tuned him out as her eyes fell upon a long piece of metal sticking out loosely from another crate that was close enough to her hiding spot.

And suddenly, a very reckless and very _dangerous_ plan formed in her mind – and then her mind was made up and there was no turning back.

After making sure the guy was still ranting and with his back turned to her, Lena slowly made her way towards the piece of metal (that turned out to be a short pipe). She pulled it out carefully, holding it tightly in her hand as she snuck up behind him. Peter noticed her when she got close, but other than a slight widening of his eyes he didn’t do anything to betray her position. She held her breath, tightened her hold on the pipe and swung across the blue guy’s head.

The guy fell to the side hard, giving her the opportunity to run to Peter and pull him up from the ground. Even though he accepted her help, he still shot her a glare. “I told you to stay on the ship!” He yelled.

And even though Lena was busy watching the other guy slowly recover at the same time she was tugging on Peter’s arm, she still managed to snap back at him. “Really, you want to complain about that _now?!_ ”

Once Peter was back on his feet, Lena shot forward – as she was not willing to stay and feel the wrath of the guy she’d just _whacked on the head_. Peter was still a little wobbly behind her, but after stumbling a few steps he matched Lena’s pace and the two ran as fast as they could back to the ship.

Somewhere along the way, they started hearing angry shouts coming from behind them and they quickly shared a glance before running even faster.

\---

“What the hell did you do to piss off those guys?” She yelled, throwing herself on the co-pilot seat and buckling in as quickly as she could.

Peter was already pressing buttons and screens, having neglected the seat belt in favor of taking off the ship as fast as he could. Lena didn’t really have any objections and, for some reason, kept throwing backwards glances as if someone might have followed them into the ship itself.

“Oh you know,” Peter spoke, a little bit hysterical as he turned on the engines, “the usual.”

“Lying, thieving and general deceitfulness?”

Peter let out a loud, hysterical laugh as the ship took off from the ground. “Pretty much!”

While Lena may not have been very familiar with space at that point, but even she knew when they managed to escape from the planet’s atmosphere and into the blackness of space. Peter didn’t stop piloting until a long while, though, as he wanted to make sure they weren’t being followed. Once he was sure of it, Peter put the ship in autopilot and leaned back on the seat, letting out a long sigh.

“I need a drink.” He spoke, mostly to himself.

“There are no drinks.” Lena replied anyway. “Last time I checked.”

He sighed again, pushing himself off the chair. “Fine. Water, then.”

Lena stared at him as he descended the stairs with an odd look. She quickly unbuckled her seatbelt and went after him, and ended up finding him drinking – well then – water. He must really be desperate.

Peter ignored her as he leaned against the table tiredly, paying attention mostly to his ever growing headache.

“You’re bleeding.” Lena stated.

He looked down at himself quickly, and then looked up at her when he didn’t see any blood. “Where?”

She pointed. “Your face.”

He brought his hand up and touched the side of his face that had been hit. Bringing his hand away he saw that his fingers were stained red.

He sighed. “Eh, it’s nothing.”

When he didn’t move, Lena pressed. “You’re not gonna do anything about it?”

“It’s nothing serious.”

There was a long pause as Lena watched him with an intent look on her face and he, in turn, tried to ignore her stare. Peter didn’t know _what_ she wanted from him, and he was too tired and too sore to spare the brainpower to figure it out. She’d forget about it soon enough.

Lena was the first to break the silence.

She sighed. “Do you even some kind of medical kit in here?”

“Yeah, yeah, in the bathroom. It’s fine.” He answered distractedly, touching the cold cup of water to his temple to try and soothe the pain.

She nodded. “Alright.” And then walked away into someplace he couldn’t care less - his headache was demanding his full attention at the moment.

 A minute later, Lena walked back into the common area and dropped something on the table next to him. He glanced down curiously and noticed it was his medical kit. Or at least he thought it was, he hadn’t touched that thing in a while.

Peter shot her a questioning look at the same time she pointed at the table and spoke. “Sit.” He raised an eyebrow at her. She rolled her eyes in return. “Just do it.”

Unsurely, he did as he was told and jumped up on the table. Lena diverted her gaze from his face and turned to the medical kit, examining its contents. Picking up some cloth, she grabbed the cup of water from his hands (after ignoring a small protest on his part), sniffed it to make sure it was really water, and then poured some on the cloth. She set the cup down on the table and slapped his hand away before bringing up the wet cloth to his face.

He tried to protest, say he didn’t need her to take care of his wounds as they weren’t serious enough to warrant the attention, but every time he opened his mouth or raised a hand she’d stop him.

“You’re ridiculous.” She started. “And stupid. And reckless.”

He winced as the cloth made contact to the cut on his cheek – so maybe it was worse than he thought it’d be. “So?”

“So…” She trailed off. She pressed the cloth against the wound a bit harder and he winced again.

“You worry?” He suggested with a small smirk.

Her hand paused halfway to his face as her eyes narrowed. “I worry… that I’m going to end up all alone in space again, after you go get yourself killed.” She then resumed the cleaning.

“You don’t have to worry about _that_.” He said, continuing to smirk. “I’ve been doing this all my life – I haven’t died before and I’m not going to die now.”

“I have my doubts.” She muttered.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you questioning my competence?”

“Uh-huh. Now be quiet.”

Peter shot her a nasty look, but he didn’t really mean it. And by look she gave him he knew she was teasing him anyway. Slumping down, he sighed and looked away as he let Lena do her thing – he’d give in this time and let her treat his cut.

(It was nice having someone looking after him for a change.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a lot to say about this chapter other than interactions! Friendship! Development! Sort of! I really want to get into the friendshippy part, it's fun c: (and then we can move on to the shippy part ooh yeaa) Enjoy!


	9. The Yondu Challenge

The Ravagers were agitated that day, with beings of all shapes and sizes wearing red coats walking back and forth, hurrying from one place to another. Everyone was worked up about something, that much was clear (and she'd only been sitting there outside of the Milano for ten minutes or so).

It was one of those 'checking in with the Ravagers' occasions that Peter had to do every now and then. Lena had already gotten used to it over the past few months, and she no longer dreaded stepping outside the safe-zone that was the Milano and into the Ravager mothership. This time, however, she was surprised to find everyone so agitated.

"Wonder what got everyone so worked up." Peter commented as he stepped outside and stood next to her.

Lena just shrugged and took a bite out of the sandwich in her hands. (Yes, there are sandwiches in space, apparently.) Quite frankly, she didn't usually meddle into Ravager affairs, and she'd spent enough time around these parts to learn how to keep herself distanced from it (for safety reasons).

Peter sat down next to her, slyly reaching out to rip a part of her sandwich off and stuffing it into his mouth. Ignoring her indignant 'hey', he spoke. "They all only get like this when Yondu's not happy."

"Did he not get paid, or something?"

Peter shrugged. "Dunno, could be any number of things. I don't particularly feel like finding out."

Loud footsteps approached the Milano, and a tall blue guy with a weirdly shaped head showed up, looking quite distressed. "Quill!" He yelled. "The captain wants to see you on the bridge. _Now_." And then he turned away and hurried off to somewhere else.

 _I guess everybody's really in a hurry_ , Lena thought.

Peter sighed. "And of _course_ I am about to find out."

Like a child being forced to do his chores, Peter grumpily got up and dusted off his pants before stepping forward. He wasn't even three feet away, however, when Lena suddenly got up as well and fell into step beside him. Not breaking stride, Peter shot her a questioningly look but she simply shrugged as she wiped any leftover crumbs from the sandwich off her face.

If worst came to worst, she could provide back up, right?

Or, well, the moral support kind, anyway.

\---

The bridge was even more tumultuous than the docking bay – everyone was scurrying around and no one paid much attention to Peter and Lena when they walked into the area. After scanning through the crowd, Peter spotted Yondu yelling at two people somewhere in the middle of the mess, and he approached him with quick and assured steps.

"Yondu." Peter called – _better to get it over with_. Lena stopped right behind him.

Yondu stopped yelling for a moment (which the two Ravagers he was yelling at seemed grateful for) and turned around to face the two Terrans. His eyes quickly fell on Lena, though, and his frown deepened.

"What's the girl still doing here? I thought I told you to send her packing." He said.

Lena was about to retort but Peter beat her to it. "Yeah… Long story." Peter brushed him off. "So, you wanted to see me?"

After throwing one last look at Lena, Yondu turned back to Peter and went into 'captain mode'. "I need you to go to Hogar V and get Volko back to the mothership."

Peter frowned in confusion. "Why can't you just call him?"

Yondu shot him an impatient glare. " _Because_ – communication systems are down and I need him to fix it – but I can't call him up here _without_ communications, now can I?"

"So _that's_ what got everyone in a tizzy." Yondu glared harder and Peter put up his hands. "Okay, okay, fine. But you do realize it'll take at least a week to even get to Hogar V, right?"

"Well, he's the only tech we've got, so get movin', boy!"

Peter let out a tiny sigh – Volko was the only Ravager that truly understood how the Ravager computer systems worked, as the others were more proficient in, well, shooting people and stealing things. There were a few others who could probably try to fix the system, but last he'd heard they were somewhere even further away from Hogar V so they were out of question. Guess he had no choice other than to go fetch Volko – unless he wanted to get a yaka arrow right through his windpipe.

Peter nodded and turned away, motioning for Lena to follow.

"I can fix it."

And he stopped in his tracks.

So did Yondu, apparently, and both him and Peter turned to stare at the girl that had just spoken. Peter was slightly wide eyed – _I thought I told you to keep quiet!_ – and Yondu was frowning, but there was definitely an air of intrigue in his eyes.

"What did you say?" Yondu asked.

"I said I can fix your communication systems." Lena spoke again, more confidently this time.

"Really?" He asked. The frown was gone, now replaced with a raised eyebrow and a challenging smirk.

"I'm very good with computers. Ask Peter." She motioned towards him and Peter could only shrug wide eyed – he had _not_ been expecting this turn of events.

Although he did have to admit she was actually kind of good with computers. She had been messing with his ship's systems for months now, and had surprisingly _not_ messed them up. But fixing the Ravager's comm systems – that was a whole other thing… Right?

To be honest, he didn't really know enough about computers to tell the difference.

"And you think you can fix it?" Yondu asked, sceptical.

 _I can try_ , she wanted to say, but she ended up going with a confident "Yes."

Yondu stared, studying her.

"For a price." She added.

At the same time Yondu raised another eyebrow, Peter's eyes nearly bulged out. He tried to tug on Lena's arm and get them both away from here in case Yondu had an angry outburst, but she just shook her arm out of his grip and slapped his hand away. Then he tried to do it again for good measure, but when she didn't move, he let her go.

"Nothing comes free." She said to Yondu.

Yondu, in turn, was still silent as he held her under his scrutinizing gaze. Peter held his breath – the reason why Yondu never paid attention to the fact that Lena was still around was precisely because she never drew attention to herself, and it was just fine with him considering that he'd promised the Ravager captain that he'd get rid of her _months_ ago. And now she just had to ruin it, didn't she?

Honestly, if she got booted off into outer space, he was not going to bother. Probably.

However, Yondu slowly grinned. "And you think you can fix our systems?"

" _For a price_." She repeated.

He hummed, grinning crookedly. " _If_ you can repair them, I'll pay you… Two hundred units."

Lena's confident posture wavered just slightly – she hadn't been expecting him to actually _agree_. And she also wasn't sure whether two hundred units was a big number or not – but she didn't want to straight up accept it and make it seem like she was desperate. She had experience in this type of thing, give her some credit.

"Three hundred." She said.

"Two." Yondu replied.

" _Three_." She insisted. "But you get to pay me _only_ if I manage to fix your systems."

Yondu narrowed his eyes  for a moment and then, for Peter's and Lena's relief, grinned again. "Well, then, it's a deal." He said and then paused. "What's your name, again?"

"Lena Hansen." She answered. "So, I'm going to need to get to a computer terminal…"

\---

Over the years, Lena managed to develop this useful skill that allowed her to tune out everything else whenever she got really focused on one thing, mostly when it involved coding on a computer. At this precise moment she was using this skill to ignore the noisy background of the Ravager mothership, but for some god forsaken reason, she couldn't tune out Peter's incessant tapping of his fingers against the metal surface of the computer terminal.

"Will you stop that?!" She snapped.

Peter froze. "I'm not doing anything."

"You're distracting me."

"I'm _watching_ you. I need to make sure you're not going to mess with the systems – Yondu's orders."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, so is _that guy_." She jerked her head towards a Ravager that was leaning against a nearby wall, watching her like a hawk. Yondu had ordered Peter to watch her, but he also ordered that other guy to watch her _and_ Peter. Guess Yondu wasn't the trusting kind. "But you don't see him distracting me while I try to work."

Peter opened his mouth to speak but closed it back up, deciding to lean back on the chair he was sitting and start sulking like a child that had just been scolded. The word _manchild_ came to mind, yet again.

Lena turned back to the screen. "If I mess up because you distracted me, I'm totally blaming you."

Peter let out a tiny huff and when she sneaked a glance out of the corner of her eyes she could swear he was pouting.

Lena had to bite back a grin as she went back to work.

\---

With a long sigh, Lena plopped herself down onto the co-pilot seat of the Milano.

She did it.

She actually did it.

She never doubted her hacking skills – she can do scary things with a computer, given the chance –, but the biggest challenge so far was learning all the tricks and paths and coding for a completely different system than what she was used to. If she had to be honest, this whole 'I can fix your computer' thing was mostly just a wild gamble prompted by the reckless (and slightly prideful) part of her brain, as a way to prove to herself, and everybody else, that she still could do the _only_ thing she knew how to do.

_And yup, still got it._

"I take it back." Peter spoke, poking his head up from the stairs hatch as he climbed up. "You're actually pretty good with computers."

"And you're realizing that just now?" She answered, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, you know." Peter offered her a bottle with some kind of beverage inside. "Gotta see it to believe it."

Lena took the offered bottle but only sniffed it, suspicious, as Peter dropped down on the pilot seat with a bottle of his own. She shrugged. "Fair enough." Pausing, she stared hard the bottle in her hand. "This isn't one of those 'melt down your intestines' kind of drinks, is it?"

"Nah, it's one of the lighter ones." And then he took a swig of his drink.

Waiting to see his reaction to the drink, and then seeing it wasn't particularly bad, Lena took a swig of her own.

Not bad, it was like a really concentrated beer. She could get drunk to this.

"But hey – you got three hundred units now. And Yondu doesn't think you're dead weight." Peter said.

"Did _you_ think I was dead weight?"

Peter paused. "Do you want me to answer that?"

Lena narrowed her eyes at him, mostly just teasing – she already had a pretty clear idea of what he'd thought of her when they first met. She brought the bottle back up to her mouth, settling back on the seat.

After a moment of silence, Peter spoke. "So what are you going to do with the money?"

"I don't know." She replied. "Buy some clothes?"

"The first thing you want to do with your money is going clothes shopping?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know, I don't really feel comfortable wearing red leather all day, every day." She grabbed her jacket and shook it to illustrate her point. "Even more so because it's a Ravager uniform – and I'm not even a Ravager!"

"There are other things you can do with the money…" Peter muttered. "Like splitting up…"

She raised an eyebrow. "You mean you want part of the money you had no hand in getting?"

 Peter raised his shoulders in defence. "You do realize I've been letting you live here for _free_."

Lena had a reply on the tip of her tongue when she suddenly stopped. _He was right_. Peter had let her stay in his ship without asking for anything in return, which was kind of a surprise since he was technically a space pirate/professional thief. At first she'd thought he'd felt sorry for her and was keeping her around out of pity, and he _had_ been quite reluctant about the whole thing at first, but then…

Well, she didn't know what happened, exactly. They had sort of fallen into this weird routine as they got to know each other past the whole 'scared Terran abductee' and 'alien rescuer guy who turned out to not really be an alien'. And without even realizing, she'd started thinking less and less about how she would get home, and more about trying to find her place out here in space.

And then there was Peter himself – even after all these months, she still didn't quite know how she felt about him. Were they acquaintances? Partners? Roommates? Friends?

"Put it on my tab, then." She said. "I'll pay you back later."

Peter snorted. "I'm sure."

She sighed, slumping back as she started spinning the seat left and right. "You can always kick me out, if you want."

As she snuck a glance at him, she noticed that he was staring off into nothing with a strange little smile on his face. She looked away.

"Nah." He said and then went quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay! Things have really picked up in real life, so I've been pretty busy. I'll try to write the next chapter faster c:
> 
> I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, I feel like things are moving just reeaaaally slow. BUT! I'm going to start doing some time skips, and then bigger time skips! For instance, this chapter takes place a few months after the beginning of the story, and next one is probably going to have a time skip also. I'm just really torn about wanting to take my time developing things and not rushing into a relationship, and also being afraid I'm dragging things out for too long.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you guys are enjoying so far!


	10. Interlude: Lady Company and Near Kissing

This was the first time Lena found herself engaged in an intelligent conversation with someone ever since coming to space. Sure, she had conversations with Peter, but most of his knowledge was on a 'must know' basis.

This guy, on the other hand, was not only very smart, but he also didn't give off that 'I'll kill you if you piss me off' vibe that seemed to follow her wherever she went, which put him in the category of friendly acquaintances (he also had this affable and elderly thing going on for him, which helped). Of course, he wasn't exactly Mr. Nice Guy - he was some kind of technology dealer that Peter had just done a job for. After all the deals and payments were finished with surprisingly no complications, both her and Peter had been invited to join him for drinks in a decent-looking club. Peter accepted it readily, reassuring her that he'd done other jobs for this guy in the past and he was pretty decent, all things considered.

Somehow, that led to Lena sitting across from the guy (whose name she still wasn't sure of and at this point she was too afraid to ask) in a heated discussion about technology – he seemed especially fascinated by Terran technology and how _primitive_ it all was. Lena couldn't help but defend her home planet – they were still in development, after all, and they hadn't even managed to master space travel yet (the fact that most people on Earth thought that there was no life in other planets thoroughly amused him).

All in all, there were _much_ worse ways that this night could have gone.

"Do tell me more about this... _Wi-Fi_ of your planet." He said, grinning.

"Wireless internet." Lena said. "Kind of recent—" She was interrupted by someone poking her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw that it was Peter – actually, now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen him in a while. Had he sneaked away sometime during the conversation? "What?" She snapped at him.

"I'm heading back to the ship." He said. "You just—take your time, no need to rush back or anything, 'kay?" He finished with a very suspicious grin.

She frowned at him. "You're not planning to take off without me, are you?"

His face sombered up a little as he spoke in a more serious tone. "No, no, I promise. I just have, ah, some things I need to take care of." Then he grinned and clapped her on the shoulder. "Just take your time!" He said and turned away.

Lena sighed, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the dealer guy – who was staring at her with an amused expression. "What?" She asked, suddenly self-conscious.

"You've got a funny look on your face." He said, pointing at her.

Torn between completely denying it and being very curious about what it was (she didn't know that she was even doing anything), she decided on the latter. "What kind of look?"

"I'm not sure… It's a mixture of fondness and familiar exasperation – I suppose you have to deal with him often?"

She snorted. "More than you think." She paused. "I'd go more with the exasperation part, though."

\---

It was a while later that she decided to return to the ship. Dealer had excused himself to attend to other matters, so she took that as her cue to leave and head back, maybe to make sure the ship was still there.

(To be honest, she wasn't actually afraid of Peter leaving her behind anymore.)

Peter wasn't on the top deck when she stepped inside the Milano and didn't answer when she called his name, so she figured he was either asleep, or busy with the computer. She tried calling his name one more time, but still no answer. What Lena did spot was the open hatch that lead to the lower floor, so she decided to poke her head through it to see if Peter was even down there at all.

She regretted that decision.

Even from her upside down view of the lower floor, she still clearly saw something that she wished she hadn't and that was now probably (and regrettably) imprinted on her brain.

Because Peter wasn't alone, he had company – female company. And they were both half naked on his bunk (thankfully hers was untouched… as far as she could tell) and they were on a rather heavy making out session.

_Well then._

_I should have stayed in the club longer._

Lena considered yelling out his name but decided against interrupting whatever they were doing down there – she was already embarrassed enough, thank you very much. Silently, she closed the hatch and lifted herself up, slightly awkwardly fidgeting on the spot as she tried to figure out what to do next.

\---

Lena ended up dozing off on the co-pilot seat using her recently bought jacket as a blanket – the tiredness from the day before caught up to her and she didn't even have the time to consider playing with the computer when her eyes suddenly started drooping.

She was later awakened by the sound of the hatch opening and voices drifting up from it. Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she turned to stare at the dark head of hair coming out of the hatch. And then she was staring at two dark eyes belonging to a purple-ish skinned woman that looked very bewildered in seeing Lena also.

"Uhm…" The woman spoke, stopping halfway out of the hatch as she stared at Lena in confusion.

From downstairs, she could hear Peter's muffled voice. "What is it?"

Lena only managed to keep blinking – turned out she had straight out fallen asleep on the seat, and was having trouble getting her brain to fully work.

The woman finished climbing up and Peter stepped out after her, eyes quickly widening as he saw Lena staring at them both with a blank expression on her face.

He thought it was kinda scary – why did it suddenly feel like she was going to scold him?

But mostly, Lena was still partly asleep.

"Who is this?" The woman asked, directing her question at Peter.

"Uh—" Peter stammered.

Lena finally managed to shake the sleep out of her mind and pushed herself out of the seat. "I'm his… co-pilot." Plastering a, somewhat fake, smile, she added. "Nice to meet you!"

The woman responded with a hesitant smile. Turning to Peter, she said, "I didn't know you had a… co-pilot."

"Well, I didn't know she'd be back so _early_." Peter shot Lena a tight smile.

Lena shot him one right back. " _I_ didn't know you had _company_. Maybe put a sock on the door knob next time?"

The woman was still awkwardly standing next to Peter and he took it as his cue to show her out – this whole awkward atmosphere was not something he was used to dealing with and the faster he could get rid of it, the better.

They exchanged their goodbyes (at least this one wasn't expecting him to call back anytime soon) and as she was stepping out of the Milano, Lena called out after her, "Well, it was very nice to meet you!" Once she was out of sight, she turned to Peter. "What was her name again?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

Lena shot him a disbelieving look.

"What?" He said.

Lena stared at him for one long moment before sighing. "Somehow I feel I shouldn't be so surprised." Then she turned away and headed towards the open hatch. "Oh well, as long you didn't do anything on my bunk."

"Of course not." He paused. "Not today."

 -----

In her life, there were a couple of accidents involving her and computers that _might_ not have been so accidental after all. Some of which included accessing one of her foster parents' computer remotely and deleting a handful of files, and bypassing the site blocks in computer lab in high school. Those _might_ not have been as accidental as she'd claimed – once people found out about her explorations.

This situation, however, was completely accidental.

Okay, maybe not completely. She did use a public computer terminal to explore - ahem - more hidden files in the city network – but it was all part of her quest to learn more about alien computer languages and how their tech worked. What she hadn't meant to do was tap into confidential police files that she had no business seeing. And as she hadn't meant to do it, she hadn't been hiding her location properly.

And so she had been easily located by the police. Next thing she knew, Lena had a handful of angry alien cops running after her.

Luckily for her, their species were somewhat slower than herself, so with a few turns here and there she managed to lose them. For a little while.

Luckily for her, again, her legs had carried her to the place she was supposed to meet with Peter, and she quickly spotted the familiar red jacket in the crowd, sitting on a bench just as a native woman was getting up, making eyes at him.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she did a mental eye roll.

Thinking quickly, surprising herself at how fast the plan had come to her, she took off her hair band letting her hair go free and then took off her jacket, all the while still running (or actually fast walking, she didn't want to seem too suspicious) and then threw it into the bushes behind the bench Peter was on. She sat next to him quickly and fluffed up her hair to make her look as different as possible from the way she looked previously, and before Peter could properly process her state of disarray, Lena grabbed his face with both hands and brought him close. Close as in noses-touching, breath-on-your-face kind of close. Basically it looked like they were kissing.

She might have stolen that idea from a movie or another she'd watched on Earth. Except without any lip on lip action (kissing Peter wasn't really on her priorities list at the moment). Still, if she wasn't so preoccupied with the cops finding her, she would have found this situation very awkward.

"Lena, what--" He started, lightly trying to pull away.

She tightened her grip on his head. "Just stay still, go along with it." She urged and he complied. Albeit while shooting nervous glances all over her face.

From behind her she heard a commotion which drew Peter's gaze and realization seemingly dawned on him – he had many skills he took pride in, but two in special were his quick thinking and his ability to bullshit his way through things. Putting a hand on her side, he nudged her even closer to better hide her face and it was Lena's turn to start feeling awkward over the position they were in.

She started counting how many of his breaths she could feel on her face to distract her wandering mind (which actually didn't help at all), until the commotion behind them was gone and she took it as a sign that the cops had ran the other way.

"Okay, I think they're gone." He spoke, pulling away as she dropped her hands off his face. With their proximity gone, she could focus back on the situation at hand.

She shot a nervous look over her shoulder and nodded. "Good." She breathed deeply, relieved, and rubbed a hand over her face. This was definitely not on her list of things to do today.

"...So, what did you do?"

Lena glanced back at Peter. "I, uh-- It was an accident."

"How do you get chased by the cops by _accident_?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, don't answer that. But what exactly did you do?"

"Well, I might have hacked into places I wasn't supposed to."

"As in?"

"As in... Confidential police files."

"How did you do _that_?" Peter asked, amused.

"By accident!"

Peter grinned, shaking his head. "Well okay, accidental master hacker, we should probably get back to the ship before anyone else comes looking for you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been… two years? Oh wow. I'm kinda embarrassed. A lot. Honestly, though, after I lost inspiration for this I went to focus on other projects which involved original stories of my own, so this story was put on the back burner. Fast forward two years and here we are? Well then.  
> I was still very fond of this story actually, and with the new GOTG movie coming out, inspiration strikes again! To be honest, I never thought this story with much of a plot, mostly they were interconnected snippets and situations that I thought up in my free time and trying to put it all together was actually pretty hard :c So I was thinking of doing something like that, much like this chapter is two separate situations that are connected nevertheless. Or maybe I won't do that. We'll see!  
> Anyways, I apologize for all the people I kept waiting all this time! Besides this chapter, I do have some more material so I might post something new very very soon (not two years this time, I promise!)


	11. Talks of the Past

"Ow."

"Stop moving."

"I'm not." Peter insisted. Lena just shot him a look.

After another job gone wrong, Peter had ended up with a large bloody gash across his chest and Lena had been tasked to clean it up (simply because Peter neglected taking care of these things and just brushed it off as if it was nothing – it was a wonder he'd never ended up with an infected cut before. Or maybe he did, she wouldn't put it past him). However, Peter squirmed every time she pressed a gauze to the wound, making it hard for her to get the job done.

"How did you not get yourself killed before I came along?" She asked.

"I always figure something out."

She let out a sarcastic hum. "Of course. I'm sure you would have figured out how to bypass the security cameras by yourself."

"I'd have figured something – and how did you even manage that?"

"Computers, hacking – it's my specialty."

"But still," he grinned, "not bad."

Peter winced, looking away as he felt another sharp sting from his wound, and when he did look back, he was surprised to find Lena looking at him expectantly. It took him a few seconds to realize what she wanted from him, and when he did, he scrunched up his nose.

"You're gonna make me say it, aren't you?"

Lena's lips tugged upwards as she looked away and pretended to focus on his wound. "Hm-hm."

He let out a long and exaggerated sigh before speaking. " _Fine_. I appreciate the help."

She narrowed her eyes at him, mouth opening to speak before deciding otherwise. "Alright, I'll take what I can get." She said instead. " _You're welcome._ "

Peter's lips tugged upwards and he let his eyes wander off to the side.

Meanwhile, Lena put their banter aside to focus back on cleaning his wound, scolding herself whenever her eyes 'accidentally' wandered lower down his bare chest—

What?

Peter wasn't bad looking. He's pretty well built, nice to look at, and she'd seen him shirtless a few times before (mostly when he came out of the shower without a shirt on). Still, she didn't want to stare any more than strictly necessary – there was a fine line between finding someone good-looking and being attracted to them, and that was a bridge she did _not_ want to cross right now.

So she decided to break the silence one more time, mostly to keep her mind occupied. "But how _did_ you manage to not get killed while I wasn't around?"

Peter sighed and then grinned. "You know – don't think too much about your problems and they'll solve themselves!"

She raised an eyebrow. "So, basically, you've just been hakuna matata-ing your problems away?"

"Haku-what?"

"Hakuna matata." She repeated.

"Still don't know what that is."

Her hand froze halfway to his chest, her eyes shooting up to meet his as she gave him one long serious stare. Peter unconsciously leaned away from her, slightly intimidated. "Hakuna matata." She repeated once more. "The Lion King?" After seeing no recognition on Peter's expression, she continued, disbelieving. "You don't know what the Lion King is?"

"…No?"

She threw her hands up. "Have you even seen any Disney movie at all?!"

"Of course I have!" He said, defensively. "Just not… that one. Might have not come out yet, before…" He trailed off.

"Before…?"

"Before… I left Earth."

Her face scrunched up – if the Lion King came out in the nineties, when did Peter leave Earth?

"And when was that, exactly?" She voiced her question.

Peter looked away from her, but she could see it in his eyes that he was considering whether or not to tell her. In the end, he gave a resigned sigh and spoke. "1988. I think."

Her eyebrows drew together. "How old were you?"

"Eight."

There were a lot of implications running around in her head – first, she calculated his age (she can't believe she'd never asked) and it put him somewhere around thirty-one. She briefly mused what her foster parents' reactions would be if they knew she was living with a guy nearly ten years older than her – but to be honest, she hadn't spoken with them in years. Also, of course, not considering the whole space thing.

Second, it got her wondering how and why he'd left Earth, and how _did_ he get involved with the Ravagers in the first place?

"How did it happen?" She ended up asking.

Peter shrugged trying to look as nonchalant as possible. "The Ravagers picked me up. Freaked the hell out of me, but at least they didn't eat me, so it could have been worse."

She frowned. "Why did they pick you up?"

"I don't know – Yondu never told me. They were bored, I guess."

Lena wanted to ask a thousand other questions to sate her curiosity, but she could feel Peter's mood turning sour. It didn't take much to know that he didn't like talking about his past, so Lena bit her tongue and shelved those questions away for another time.

The two Terrans fell in silence after that, Peter looking anywhere but at her and Lena trying hard to focus on finishing up with his wound. She was barely successful – there were a million questions running through her mind that she had to file away for another time.

And just as she was securing a gauze over his chest while trying to come up with a different topic to fill the awkward silence that had fallen over them, one thing he'd said popped up in her mind and she suddenly remembered this one little thing that she _can't believe she'd forgotten about it_.

Whipping around suddenly, startling Peter out of his own reverie, Lena ran to her bunk where she kept the bag she'd brought from Earth and grabbed it excitedly. She vaguely registered Peter approaching her from behind as she rummaged through the contents of her bag, desperately trying to find _that one thing_.

"What are you doing?" Peter asked, cautiously.

Lena made a shushing sound as she continued her search. She was beginning to get disheartened that she couldn't find it, when she suddenly remembered the mock-hidden pocket inside the bag. Digging around in there, she found what she was looking for and brought it out triumphantly.

Peter stared at it confusedly. "What is it?"

"It's a flash drive." She said as if stating the obvious. Although she could see where his confusion was coming from – her flash drive was penguin-shaped, but she'd lost the little cap where the head used to be a long time ago so now it only looked like a penguin with a USB plug sticking out of its neck.

Peter, however, was still confused. "…what is it?"

It suddenly occurred to her that they didn't have flash drives back then, and out here in space there were much more advanced ways of storing and transporting data.

"It's a flash drive." She repeated. "You don't have these out here, do you?"

"No." Peter grabbed it out of her hand and began examining it curiously. "What does it do?"

"Well… It's basically a storage for computer files." She paused. "I take it you've never used an USB port before?"

"No." He said, handing it back to her. Peter leaned down to pick up a clean shirt on the bunk next to him and put it over his head. "What's in there? Is it some of your computer hacking things?" He paused, shirt halfway on, and his eyes lit up a second later. "Are there more games in there?"

She grinned. "No. Better."

"What's better than games? Music?"

"Movies."

His eyes lit up again as he finished putting on his shirt. "Earth movies?"

Her grin widened. "Yup."

Peter made a move to grab the flash drive again, but Lena quickly ducked under his arm and made her way to the table computer. Peter followed her eagerly, much like a puppy begging its owner to take him out for a walk.

"I can't believe you had that all this time and you didn't even think to mention it." He said, stopping next to her as she started examining the panel where there were all sorts of ports and connectors to the computer.

"Well, I ended up leaving my other flash drive with all my music back on Earth, so I thought I had left this one there too. Turns out," She pulled out a long wire that was connected to a USB-looking port, "that I didn't."

"Do you have Footloose in there?"

She looked up from the wire to shoot him a funny look. "Footloose?" Peter shrugged. She went back to examining the wire, biting back a grin. "Interesting choice of film." She said, but then frowned as she saw that the port and the flash drive's USB plug didn't fit – it was worth a shot.

"Do you?"

"Ah… I don't know. I've downloaded so many movies that I don't know which ones are in here and which ones I left in my laptop. But I _do_ know that I've got The Lion King here, and also all the Star Wars movies – which I think you'll appreciate."

Peter's eyes lit up again like a kid in Christmas eve – _God, he really is like a little kid when it comes to Earth, isn't he?_ "You've got Star Wars?"

"All six of them."

And then his eyes were clouded in confusion. "Six?"

Once again it dawned on her how _long_ ago Peter had last stepped on Earth, and just how many things he'd missed during this time.

"Yeah, they made a prequel trilogy some years later." She explained and shrugged. "Eh – they're not that great. But first, we need to find a way to make this work."

* * *

"Hey, hey! Put that back!"

Lena looked up bewildered. "What?"

Peter lunged at her, grabbing the Walkman out of her hands. "What are you doing with it, you're gonna break it!" He yelled, holding the Walkman away from her.

"I'm not going to break it!" She cried out defensively.

"Then what were you doing with it?!"

"I was just trying to see what kind of batteries you were using for this thing!"

Only after inspecting the Walkman thoroughly and feeling relieved that nothing seemed out of place that Peter relaxed and stopped looking at her as if she was about to murder him in his sleep. Or his Walkman. "Yeah, well. Don't… mess with it."

"I wasn't going to."

After staring at her for a few more seconds, Peter looked away and turned back to the Walkman, pressing the play button. The familiar notes of Come and Get Your Love filled the air, but even with the music there was an awkward atmosphere as Peter avoided her gaze.

"Well…" She started, not knowing what to say after Peter's outburst. "What kind of batteries _are_ you using?"

His eyes briefly looked up at hers before he looked away and stopped the music. "It's modified to use a different power source – they don't really sell regular Earth batteries out here in space, if you haven't noticed."

She did, actually, which was the reason she was so curious about it – they'd managed to power up her cell phone using some alien battery so she was curious about if he did the same thing to the Walkman. Now, however, she was curious about the Walkman itself, or better yet – what did it mean to Peter to cause such an overreaction over her just _touching_ the damn thing? It's not like she hasn't poked and prodded things around the ship before, mostly computer related, but he never once reacted like this. So what was it about this little Walkman?

"Hm-hm." She nods, trying to act casual. "It's pretty well preserved. The tape too."

Her attempts at acting casual failed as Peter finally looked at her with a hint of suspicion, so she decided to throw all tact through the window.

"What's the deal with it?" She blurted out.

"The deal with what?" Peter said, trying to play dumb.

"Your Walkman. That tape deck above your bunk. That one mix tape that you keep playing over and over and over… What is this?"

Peter was finally looking at her now, his face betraying some kind of internal conflict on, she assumed, whether or not he should tell her.

He sighed. "It's… I had this on me when I left Earth."

She raised an eyebrow and motioned for him to continue – she'd figured _that_ , but she also figured there was more to the story. He looked away from her again.

"My mom gave it to me. She made this mix tape with some of her favorite songs growing up." He said and went quiet.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that was a sore subject for him. Still, her curiosity got the better of her – there was so much she didn't know about him, about how he ended up in space of all places, about how he became a Ravager, about why he didn't want to go back to Earth even though it was technically possible. So, against her better judgement, she prodded. "And… Where is she now?"

"Gone." He answered curtly. Peter busied himself with the mechanical parts scattered over the table, or at least tried to make himself busy.

So the Walkman held a lot more value than she thought it had – Peter didn't hold on to it out of simple sentimentality for his former home, but because it holds an emotional connection to his late mother.

Well now, she felt like an insensitive jerk.

As Peter went back to refusing to look at her, Lena openly stared at him while trying to figure out what to say to break this weird tension between the two. Mostly she wanted to apologize for prying, but she was always terrible with apologies so she settled for something else.

"I never had a mom." She spoke. "Or a dad."

That earned her a glance from Peter, having apparently piqued his curiosity.

"I grew up in and out of foster homes." She continued. "And there were a few, until this one couple took me in and—they were nice, I guess. Nice enough to put up with me for quite some time, until I left for college to live on my own. I haven't seen them since."

Lena didn't particularly like telling her life story to people, mostly because, well, there wasn't much to it. She was left for adoption when she was a baby and lived with foster parents until college. She may have been a bit troublesome to deal with during her early teens, but her last foster parents had the patience of saints and kept her in for over six years, which was a record for her. They treated her and the other children well despite everything, which was probably why she never managed to muster up the courage to go back to see them after she was kicked out of college and ended up involved in illegal hacking business.

_If only they could see me now._

The reason she was telling Peter this was because as much as she didn't know anything about him, _he_ didn't know anything about her. As much as they bickered and bantered they'd never really talked about personal stuff or discussed their pasts with each other, settling on more superficial topics instead. Now, though, that he told her something about his past, it was only fair that she tell him something about hers.

At least it was better than apologizing. For her, anyway.

"What about your parents? The real ones?" Peter asked, curious. Curious Peter is better than mopey Peter so that was progress.

She shrugged. "Never knew them."

"That sucks."

"Eh." She shrugged again. It was not that big deal.

"Well…" He started. "I never knew _my_ dad, so there's that."

"Huh." Was her only reply.

"Yeah." He said.

"Yeah."

Pause.

"So how about a drink?"

* * *

 

Bonus:

"It's more than a hardware issue – the software is a problem too. There's a whole bunch of stuff that I need to configure to make sure there are no compatibility issues—"

Peter interrupted. "I just asked how it was doing."

Lena stared at him. "And I'm answering you."

"Not in the same language, apparently."

Lena threw a nearby rag at him while silently grinning to herself. "We're using translators, regardless of the language you'd be able to understand me!"

Peter grinned while ducking away from the flying rag.

"Or maybe it's not a language problem, maybe it's a matter of mental capacity—"

"Hey! Low blow." He said, amused, as he shrugged on his jacket. "Anyway, I'm off. Things to do, people to—"

"…steal from?"

"Something like that."

She grinned again in spite of herself. Just as Peter was stepping outside the Milano, she called out, "Did you get the name of the part I need?"

"Yeah, yeah." He called back.

"If you don't get it there will be no movies!"

"I said I'll get it!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said it would be soon! Part of me thinks things are going too fast and the other part of thinks it's too slow, but I think it's time I kick the plot forward and slow down on these random snippets of their adventures. And then you ask – there's a plot?! And I answer – eeh
> 
> If I have enough ideas for drabbles and such that don't fit in chapters (much like the little bonus scene at the end) I might publish them as another story like a collection of drabbles, but that's just a big maybe, haha. Honestly though, this whole story actually started as a bunch of random drabbles that I'm trying hard to tie together, so who knows what'll happen next.
> 
> And one last thing, this story is set somewhere in 2011 so it's a few years before the movie and also before the Chitauri invaded New York, so the general population has no idea that aliens exist. Also I'm totally guessing Peter's age here, though I think I read somewhere that he was born in 1980. Anyway, until next time and thank you for reading!


	12. Bye

Back when Lena had first come into his life, Peter had promised to look for a way to get her back to Earth. And he'd meant that, mostly – as long as it didn't involve _him_ going back to Earth. He made sure to ask around whenever they touched planet… at least at first. Days passed and then weeks and then months, and before he knew it Lena had become a constant presence in his life and he just… got used to it. The thought of getting her back to Earth became the least of his concerns.

It's not like she made much fuss about it anymore – back then she used to nag about it all the time, but it eventually faded over time.

So it came as a surprise when one of his contacts called about a transporting ship willing to breach into Asgardian territory for a (considerably reasonable) price, to take Lena back to Earth.

"I've sent their location to you, so you can go there and talk things through." His contact was finishing saying. "Don't take too long, though, once they set off who knows where they'll go or when they'll come back. You might not get this chance again."

Peter blinked. "Uh, yeah. Thanks, man. I owe you one."

The blue alien on the screen snorted. "You owe me three. And I plan to collect." And the call was cut off.

Peter stood in front of the screen for a moment trying to gather his thoughts – he could see the location of the transporters on the display and it was true that they weren't that far off, wouldn't take more than a couple of days to get there. Which meant…

That was it.

He'd meet with the transporters, arrange the whole ordeal, and send Lena on her way. She'd go home and he'd be all by himself again.

But that had always been the plan, hadn't it? So why did it feel like a sudden bucket of cold water washed over him?

Furiously rubbing his hands over his face, Peter plopped down on the nearby seat and turned the table screen on. He began reading over the information he was sent, making sure that everything checked out, and much to his _totally_ -not-disappointment, it did. It actually seemed like a solid plan, far more solid than what his usual ones are.

"So, I was having a few issues with compatibility with the flash drive…" Lena started, walking into the common area while towelling her hair dry. "…but I was thinking it over while in the shower and I think I have an idea on how to…" She trailed off as she noticed the odd look Peter was wearing. "What is it?"

Peter snapped out of his thoughts. "There's, uh... This old contact of mine may have found a way to… get you back to Earth."

Lena stopped in her tracks, towel motionless in her hands. She stared blankly at Peter. "Huh."

Peter slowly nodded – he hadn't been expecting this reaction from her, but honestly he doesn't really know how to react either. "Yeah."

"So… What is it?"

"It's, uh, a… transporting ship. We'd have to pay them, of course, but they're willing to go into Asgardian territory and drop something off. Which, in this case, would be you."

Now it was her turn to slowly nod. "…Okay."

An awkward silence filled the air. Neither of them knew what to say in this situation.

Lena was the first to break the silence. "So… What now?"

"I… guess we go meet them. I'll go set the course."

Peter got up from the seat and climbed the stairs to the cockpit, leaving Lena alone with her thoughts.

Somehow, she wasn't as enthusiastic about getting home as she thought she'd be. She wasn't sure when it had happened, but some time ago she had resigned herself to the idea that she wouldn't be going back to Earth anytime soon, if at all. Maybe she should have been more upset over it, but she actually found herself not really minding the idea of living in space for an indefinite amount of time.

But now… going home was very much a possibility. Probably even more than a possibility, a certainty – now that he found a way to do so, Peter would be the first to send her packing so he could go back to his old lifestyle without any Earth girls getting in the way. Right?

Lena shook her head, going back to towelling her hair. She'll… worry about it later. Maybe after her hair was dry.

\---

Two days later, they found themselves landing on the spaceport where the supposed transporters were stationed. And somehow, during the whole two days, they managed to completely avoid the topic of her impending return to Earth until it was staring at them straight in the face.

Meeting with the captain of the transporting ship, a woman named Shar-Mka, was easy enough, and she proved herself willing to do the job as long as she got the money – it wasn't cheap, but it seemed like a solid enough deal. Peter did his part of negotiating the details of the 'delivery', so all Lena had to do was sit back and watch.

Except that there was a part of her that felt like she should say something. She wasn't sure _what_ she was supposed to say, though, so she pushed that nagging feeling to the back of her mind.

And then the deal was struck, money was paid, and they were supposed to set off to Earth on the very next day.

Well, _she_ was supposed to set off to Earth along with the transporters; Peter was going to go to who knows where, off on his own again.

"So…"

"So…"

Lena twiddled her thumbs as she leaned back on her seat.

After the meeting was done, she and Peter ended up lounging away on the pilot and co-pilot seats. Instead of the usual banter they'd spew back and forth, an awkward silence hung in the air of what would be her last day in the ship.

Was it weird that the prospect of getting home wasn't making her the slightest bit excited?

But that was what she was supposed to do, right? Space was no place for an Earth born and raised girl like her, she would be much better off back home instead.

But… what was her home, exactly?

She tried thinking back to Earth, to the first place that came to mind when she thought of home… and all she came up with was a mix of dingy motel rooms and cafes and computer screens. She tried thinking back to her old foster home, but that hadn't felt like home in a long time either, if it had at all. So what home did she have? What did she have left waiting for her back on Earth?

Lena rapidly drummed her fingers against the armrest of the seat as she chased those thoughts away. Going back to Earth had always been the plan from the start, both hers and Peter's – she had no business staying out here, being a nuisance to Peter and his space outlaw ways. Right?

"Oh, I forgot." She spoke up as she remembered something. Anything would be a welcome distraction right now. "I figured out how to access the flash drive's files."

Peter perked up. "You did? You mean you can—"

Lena jumped up from her seat. "Yup. Movies!"

She climbed down the hatch to the common area with Peter following closely behind. Reaching the table computer, she plugged the flash drive into the makeshift port she built into it and booted up the program she wrote to access its files.

"And here it is!" She exclaimed. At Peter's confused expression, she continued. "I didn't have the time to make it display the proper file names, but the movies are all there, ready to be watched." To illustrate her point, she opened up one at random and the beginnings of the Universal logo began showing on screen.

Peter stared at it wide eyed. "That's amazing."

Lena shut down the movie before the narrator could start narrating what looked like the opening scene to a Mummy movie.

"So…" She started. "I guess I can leave this to you as a gift when I'm gone. As a thank you for letting me stay here and all that."

Peter straightened himself up and looked down at his feet. "Yeah, I guess."

And the awkward silence came back.

Maybe she shouldn't have brought it up.

"Well…" This time it was Peter who broke the silence. "We still got time for one movie, don't we?"

Looking up at him, Lena couldn't help the smile that spread across her face – it was her last day in the Milano, and what better way to spend it than watching _Earth_ movies of all things?

"Alright then, what should we watch?" She said.

Peter shrugged, grinning. "I don't know. You pick."

After much consideration (and searching among the files), Lena picked none other than The Lion King itself. She managed to patch it up to the cockpit display so that they could watch it from up there, kind of like a drive-in theatre if the movie were shown on the windshield _inside_ the car. For safety reasons, this couldn't be done if anyone was trying to actually _fly_ the ship as it nearly completely obscured the view to the outside, but since they were safely stationed on the ground they could kick back and relax on the pilot seats and watch it comfortably.

All it was missing was the popcorn.

Even better than watching the movie, though, was watching Peter's reaction to it. He was very much like a little kid seeing the movie for the first time, and his reactions were so amusing to watch that she often had to catch herself from staring at him instead of at the screen.

She would miss this.

She would miss all the excitement and adventure that came with being here. She would miss going to completely different planets and learning completely different things from completely different cultures and completely different people. She would miss shooting through actual _goddamn_ space in an actual spaceship while listening to seventies pop songs on repeat. And most importantly, she would miss this over excitable, often irresponsible manchild who seemed to be permanently stuck in the eighties despite living in actual space, the one person in the entire galaxy that made her feel—

She would miss this.

Shaking her head, Lena tried to focus back on the movie but Mufasa's death wasn't helping any.

\---

They ended up marathoning Mulan and Toy Story after the first movie had ended, and she regretted not downloading more Disney movies aside from these (maybe there were a couple of others inside the flash drive, but she hadn't been able to find them among the many unnamed movies).

"So," Peter started as the credits of the last movie finished rolling, "it was fun."

"Wait 'til you see the other movies." She replied.

"No, I don't mean that—not just that." He said, smiling. "I mean, having another Terran around. It was fun."

Lena was taken aback. It _was_ fun, despite all the bad stuff that happened in the meantime, but hearing it from Peter made it seem… Well… It was nice to know the feeling was mutual.

"Being in space was fun too." She replied, biting back a smile.

Peter opened his mouth like he wanted to speak but closed it soon after, turning his face away. He turned back a moment later. "You know, watching movies _is_ better with company."

She grinned. "Yeah, well, without this company you wouldn't have any movies to watch at all."

"Yeah." He grinned back.

\---

Eventually came the time to leave.

She didn't have much stuff to pack but she certainly had more than what she started with, including clothes, trinkets and other gadgets. With an additional bag other than the one that came with her from Earth, she was pretty much ready to go.

Pretty much, not completely.

Standing at the exit of the Milano, Lena gave the place one long last look. Some weird feeling was bubbling up inside of her and she blamed it on the fact that she'd spent more time in this ship than she had anywhere else in the past couple of years, and she grew… attached.

"So…"

"So…"

Lena fidgeted on the spot, looking anywhere but at Peter while the man himself kept his hands in his pockets trying to look casual but failing. Lena risked a glance at his face, but it looked like he wasn't faring any better than her when it came to knowing what to say.

She _really_ doesn't know how to do goodbyes – usually, she'd just go up and leave. This was all very hard for her, and maybe in more ways than one.

"This is it." She spoke up. "The end of my space adventure."

"Yeah." And the conversation died again.

Lena sighed at the awkward silence. "You… try not to get yourself in too much trouble, okay?"

That earned her a smile. "Can't really promise that."

She smiled back. "Well, try to stay safe then."

"…Can't really promise that either."

She sighed fondly and on impulse threw her arms around his neck in a hug. Peter seemed to be caught off guard, but his hands soon came to rest on her back as he patted it lightly.

"Y'know, you can always come visit." She said jokingly – Peter's lack of desire to go back to Earth made it clear that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

"I'll think about it."

Pulling away before it became awkward, Lena disentangled herself from him and took a step back, picking up her bag from the floor. "Well… bye then."

Peter blinked. "…Bye."

Lena nodded. Not knowing what else to say, she decided to just end it and turned away, walking outside.

_…Bye._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh I made this chapter all dramatic and stuff. Well, sort of. I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out but I think that's because I like writing light hearted banter better, but this was necessary to get the plot going (even if this story's definition of plot is kinda loose). The lack of communication on this chapter kills me though urgh.
> 
> Did I say I was going to take my time developing their friendship? I meant reeeeally take my time. Think of the slowest burn possible. Sorry if anyone was expecting straight up romance, oops. Still, any kind of feedback is very welcome!


	13. Later Regrets

Peter was in a sour mood. Well, sour was an understatement. Or maybe just not the right word.

Point is, Peter didn't really know what he was feeling, but it certainly wasn't pleasant.

After Lena had walked out of the Milano, Peter found himself standing rooted to the spot for quite some time, with his mood going from bad to worse and he didn't know _why_.

Actually, he had an idea, but one he wasn't eager to admit – not even to himself. It wasn't possible for him to be missing Lena when she just literally walked out of the door a moment ago, was it?

Nah.

Maybe, _maybe_ … He would miss her. Maybe. After travelling alone for so long, having a buddy around was… nice. Especially someone that he could talk to, someone who actually understood his references – another Terran, just like him.

Yeah, he'll probably miss… that.

Snapping himself out of those thoughts, Peter turned away from the exit and made his way to the pilot seat. He felt antsy and agitated, like he couldn't stay still for any more than a second, so he figured the best course of action was to hightail out of there. He was in the middle of flight preparations when he paused, hand hovering over the start engine button.

What was he supposed to have done, huh? Ask her to stay?

…

…Would she have agreed?

He clenched his hand into a fist and leaned back on the seat with a long exhale.

_Too late for that now._

No longer feeling like flying out, he channelled all his agitation into the increasingly violent bouncing of his right leg. He stayed there for a good five minutes before he pushed himself off his seat and went down to the common area, intent on retrieving his Walkman and forgetting his troubles with music.

…Not that he was feeling troubled about anything in particular.

Spotting the Walkman on the table, Peter made to grab it but stopped halfway when another item caught his eye. Lena's little headless penguin-shaped flash drive sat next to it, almost mockingly staring at him despite having no eyes (and also being an inanimate object).

"Don't you start." Peter said and briefly questioned his sanity.

Swiping the Walkman off the table, Peter threw himself onto the nearby seat and drowned himself in _Hooked on a Feeling_.

\---

He was so deep into his music that he almost didn't hear the banging outside the Milano.

"What the…?" He spoke out loud as he stood up, walking towards the entrance.

The banging grew more urgent until it stopped completely, making him pause. Cautiously approaching the door, Peter went to the screen next to it and brought up the camera to the outside.

What he saw made him freeze for a second and then scramble to get the door open.

"Lena?" He asked, bewildered.

The woman in question blinked up at him, hand adjusting the shoulder strap to one of her bags. "Hey."

Peter opened and closed his mouth several times before he could come up with something to say. "I thought you left!"

Lena looked nervously to the side. "I… didn't."

"Yeah, clearly!" He paused. "What about the transporting ship – what happened?"

"Nothing." Lena shrugged. "I just… didn't go."

Peter paused again. "Why?"

She bit her lip. "Maybe… I just didn't want to go."

"You don't want to go home?"

Lena sighed, scratching the back of her neck with one hand. "Earth may be my home _planet_ , but I— I don't really have a home. So the whole 'returning home' business is kind of a moot point."

Peter stared at her in silence, trying to process what was happening. Lena looked at him expectantly.

"So you decided to stay?" He asked.

She fidgeted on the spot. "…yeah?"

Peter nodded, slowly coming to terms with the situation. "…Okay."

"It's okay if you don't want me to stay in the ship." Lena added. "Or with you. Or around you. Or—You could just drop me off somewhere nice and populated—"

"You—You can stay."

She paused, not expecting this response. "Okay. Well. Good."

"Good."

They were in silence again until Peter spoke up.

"So… What happened to those fifty thousand units we transferred them in advance?"

"Weeell, they're gone."

"Right." He narrowed his eyes playfully. "You know you owe me fifty thousand units now, right?"

A grin slowly blossomed on her face. "Put it on my tab."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, you thought it was just gonna end it like that? Pfft. I have a low quota for drama. So here you go! They're back together and it took them a whole hour or so!
> 
> Sorry that this is so short, though. But this is just to wrap up the "first act" of the story, and now we move on to Peter and Lena officially being partners in space crime-slash-roomies. Woo!


	14. Interlude: Finding Your Place (In Space)

"Alright, just remember: the engines are the last thing you need to start." Peter said.

Lena nodded, focused intently on the controls before her.

Sometime after she made the decision to not go back to Earth, Peter came up with the idea to teach her how to fly the Milano, _'since you're staying here and stuff'_ , he'd said with a shrug. Of course, he made it clear that he wasn't going to let her fly his ship by herself any time soon, but he was teaching her enough to be the co-pilot.

"Every Han Solo needs a Chewbacca." He'd said.

She playfully narrowed her eyes at him. "Are you calling me hairy?"

"I don't know, have you _seen_ the amount of hair you leave lying around everywhere?" He replied with a grin.

And that's how Lena found herself learning the ropes of being a (co) pilot to a spaceship.

Despite not having second thoughts about her decision, she still found it hard to grasp the concept of actually _living in space_ , definitely. And not just that, but also being involved in all the Ravager business that came along with living with Peter – back on Earth her method of making a living wasn't exactly legal, but _this_ was on a whole other level.

It should bother her more, though, but it doesn't. Because – and she hated admitting it – Peter was there, and things always seemed a bit brighter when he was around. At first she had chalked it up to gratitude for him saving her life, and then later on to the fact that he was the only other Earth person around, but it eventually became clear that wasn't really the case. Honestly, she just _liked_ being around him. She enjoyed his company and all that entailed. And lastly, she was immensely thankful for how he welcomed her back into his ship without question or judgement.

After so long of holding people at arm's length – mostly due to her own inability to actually just _click_ with anyone – she made a friend in a _very_ unlikely place.

And she was okay with that.

"What?" Peter spoke up, snapping her out of her reverie. She hadn't realized she was staring.

"Nothing." She said quickly. "So, engines and then—"

"No! Engines last – did you even hear what I said?"

"Well, now you know how it feels." She replied with a crooked grin.

Peter narrowed his eyes. "Fine then, smarty pants, but if you damage my ship I am _never_ letting you near the controls again." And he went back to showing her the take-off sequence.

\---

Lena was adjusting pretty well to living in space, if she had to say so herself. It may have taken her a while to figure out her place now that her objective was no longer to return to Earth, but sure enough she found something she was good at and could be of use to her – _their_ – situation.

Pouring long hours and days into figuring out all the alien computer language she could get her hands on, Lena had acquired a sizeable amount of knowledge that was proving to be quite useful to Peter and his work as a Ravager. It also didn't take long for Yondu to notice, and although he wasn't very pleased that she was still around, the Ravager leader relented when he saw that she could be of use to him as well. And so, he would occasionally enlist her aid in bypassing certain security protocols when needed, but mostly she found herself playing Ravager tech support – apparently, there aren't a whole lot of Ravagers capable of handling all the fine computer stuff as they're more adept to… shooting things.

It's a glamorous life.

Lena wasn't complaining, though.

"Here's to another job well done!" Peter toasted, raising up his glass of some alien alcoholic beverage that Lena didn't know the name of.

They had just wrapped up another job involving "acquiring" an item from some rich douchebag's private collection for another probably rich douchebag that paid them for it. Thanks to some surprisingly crappy security system, Lena was able to remotely disable it for Peter to sneak in and grab the thing. It would all have gone smoothly, had Peter not managed to alert the guards by celebrating too early, which then prompted an emergency escape maneuver on his part.

"I wouldn't say _well_ done." She teased.

Peter deflated. "Well, it's done." He chugged down his drink. "That's still a reason to celebrate."

It was true – it went (mostly) according to plan, they were out of harm's way and they got paid. Lena found no flaw in that logic so she chugged down her drink as well, tongue clicking at the mix of sweet and bitter taste of the beverage.

Peter set down his glass and walked out of the common area towards the bunk beds. "And you know what the occasion calls for – music!" He proclaimed and pressed the play button on the tape deck above his bunk. Immediately, _I Want You Back_ started blasting throughout the ship.

As Peter began dancing to the beat of the song, Lena tried, unsuccessfully, to hold back a grin at his antics. Still dancing along, Peter approached her all the while mouthing the lyrics to the song, stopping just in front of the seat she was seated on as he motioned her to join him.

"Oh, no." She said, though she was still grinning.

"Oh, _yes._ Come on."

"Nooo."

"Yeees."

Lena didn't put up much of a fight when Peter grabbed her by the hand and dragged her out of her seat.

_Oh well, I'm just drunk enough to enjoy this,_ she thought as she allowed herself to be shuffled back and forth by Peter who had yet to let go of her. A silly grin was stamped on her face as she eventually gave in and started dancing on her own accord.

As one song made way to another and then another, the two somehow found themselves laying side by side on top of the ship, having climbed out through the cockpit. The port they were stationed at had been constructed on a base overseeing this mostly purple planet that was really nice to look at, and unlike some of the other ports they'd been to this one had an open view to the sky – and planet – above. Lena wasn't sure whose idea it was to go planet-gazing, but at that moment she didn't really care.

"If we have time, remind me to take you there." Peter spoke up, pointing to the purple planet above them. "The food is _amazing_. Some of the best I've ever eaten." He said. "Just stay away from what looks like a purple spaghetti dish."

"Why?"

"It's not actually spaghetti. It's kind of… alive."

"…Okay, then. Noted."

"But everything else is fine. More than fine, actually."

Lena grinned. "Well, I love me some food. What I wouldn't do for a regular cheeseburger, though…"

Lifting himself up on his elbows, Peter snuck a glance at her face and went quiet for a moment. "Having second thoughts, are we?" He spoke up, trying to sound casual to cover up for his inner nervousness.

Truth be told, Peter had been happy to see her back. More than he cared to admit, actually, but he still had some doubts about the whole thing – not about if it was a good idea to let her stay, but rather about her decision to stay with him. What if she eventually came to regret it? He knew why he never went back home. But what about her?

It was a _really_ annoying feeling that refused to go away no matter how much he tried to ignore it.

"Not really." Lena answered without him needing to elaborate, and her reassurance did ease his mind a bit. "I'm just gonna miss cheeseburgers."

Peter regarded her in silence for a moment before flopping back down and staring back at the planet above. "Well… good. 'Cuz it might be a little too late for that."

"For the cheeseburguers?" She asked with a crooked grin.

Peter blinked, turning his head to look at her again. "Well, no, the other thing."

Lena sighed. "I know. It's still fine, though."

"Good." He paused. "Because we _might_ be able to find something like cheeseburgers somewhere in the galaxy if we look hard enough."

"I'll look forward to space cheeseburgers then." She replied with a grin.

Peter grinned back. "You do that."

"Yup."

"Yup."

They both went quiet after that, gazing at the sky in silence. A spaceship flew over them as it departed the port, the roar of its engines filling the air between them and Lena suddenly had the urge to speak.

"You know, I bet you were really going to miss me if I left." She teased.

Peter's attention shifted back to her. "Me? Pfft. No." He grinned and then paused. "Maybe just a little."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so here's me trying to establish their life and feelings now that they're permanently stuck together, so that hopefully next chapters will have actual stuff happening like, actual plot-y stuff. As much of a plot as this has, anyway. But yeah, beyond building their friendship I also wanted to build Lena's role in all this so she's not just 'random original character that I'm gonna pair with Peter because I don't really ship him with anyone in canon'. I want her to actually have a purpose, but I also want to make her work for it. Character development!
> 
> But anyway, sorry about that little rant. Also, is it too much if I remind you guys that actual feedback helps me write faster? Because I get motivated and stuff. Yup. But either way, I still want to thank you guys who are reading and following this story! It means a lot to know that I'm not just writing to empty air, haha.


	15. Never Take Your Eyes Off Your Drink

Another job done, another sleazy bar to visit. Lena was already used to this routine by now, and unless Yondu called them back for a check in, they had plenty of time to enjoy it.

Peter had separated himself from her at one point, probably to chase after another pair of legs for the night. Lena was used to that too, but she hoped that he'd have the decency to let her know he'd be having – ahem – company, before she ended up walking in on something she'd be better off not seeing. Again.

_At least Peter may not be the only one getting lucky tonight_ , she thought as she smiled and nodded at the guy talking to her. She hadn't come in expecting to get laid, but then this guy showed up, bought her a drink, and _why the hell not?_ He was good looking, he looked human (she wasn't sure she was ready for a close encounter of the alien kind anytime soon), and he didn't seem half as bad as the rest of the people around these parts.

Taking a small sip of her drink – whatever it was they put in these was strong enough to get her dizzy after a single glass – Lena laughed at something the guy said even though it wasn't particularly funny and her eyes wandered over to the bar where she could see Peter chatting up a couple of women. She wasn't sure if he was aiming for one or another or even both, but Peter was surprisingly skilled in the art of talking his way both out of and into things.

Turning back to the guy in front of her, Lena laughed again which encouraged him to continue his story in a louder voice. Her eyes eventually drifted back to Peter, who was drunkenly and animatedly talking to one of the women. He probably didn't notice that the drinks in this particular bar packed a surprisingly mean punch, just as he didn't notice the second woman slip something into his drink.

_Wait, what?_

Lena stopped paying attention to the guy in front of her completely, hoping that Peter had noticed his drink get roofied. No such luck, however, as Peter took a large swig of said beverage.

Lena was up from her seat in a flash. "Sorry, I have to go." She called out to the guy she'd been chatting up. Ignoring the guy's protests, she quickly made her way through the crowd towards the _stupid Terran that didn't even notice his drink get roofied._ Seriously, that was the first rule her foster dad had taught her – you can go to parties, but always be watchful of people slipping drugs into your drink.

As she approached the bar, Lena tried to think of a way to get Peter out of there without causing a scene – the last thing she wanted was to grab unwanted attention in this kind of place. So, a plan was formed.

Coming up next to him, Lena slipped an arm around Peter's shoulders and smiled sweetly at him. "Hey, honey." She said, and Peter blinked up at her. "This place is getting boring, can we go now?"

Peter only stared at her open-mouthed. "What?"

Lena shot the women a sickly sweet look – briefly registering the confused and ticked off expression on their faces – before turning back to Peter with a pointed look. "Time to go, _honey_."

Without warning, she grabbed his arm and pulled him out of his stool, dragging him out of the bar and onto the street.

"What the hell, Lena, I was about—"

She turned sharply to him. "I saw one of them slip something into your drink."

Peter blinked. "What?"

"How drunk are you that you didn't notice?! Didn't you ever learn to keep a watch on your own drink?"

Peter blinked twice. "I—"

"And you drank it!" She sighed. "Let's get back to the ship, before whatever it was starts to—"

But then Peter started swaying.

"Oh, no." Lena barely had time to catch him when his knees buckled forward.

"I think… I see what you mean now…" Peter muttered.

Whatever it was they gave him, it seemed to have hit him like a truck. What were those women trying to accomplish?

"Oh, no. This is bad." She muttered. Peter tried to regain his footing, but ended up nearly toppling forward. Lena wrapped her arms around his torso. "Peter, hey! Stay with me."

One of his arms came up to feebly hold on to her shoulders. "…ship. Get there."

Lena nodded and proceeded to tug him towards the Milano.

\---

After much difficulty, they reached the entrance to the ship with Peter barely hanging on and she thanked the stars that they hadn't parked it further away. Just as she was opening the entrance with one hand (the other was still wrapped around Peter's torso), he suddenly slumped in her grip and she had to catch them both from falling in a heap on the ground.

"Dammit, Peter…" She muttered as she laid his body down to rest against the ship itself so she could go back to opening the door, but not before checking him over to see if he was still breathing. Satisfied that he was, Lena opened the door and grabbed him under his arms to drag him inside.

Somehow managing to drag him through the common area and onto a bunk bed (after struggling on that last part due to his heavy weight), Lena sat down on the opposite bunk and took a long, deep breath.

"What am I going to do with you?" She muttered to herself. She has no experience dealing with someone who's been roofied, much less a _space_ roofie of all things. For all she knew, it could have been poison that they gave him – and the thought nearly sent her into a small panic before she pushed it down to focus on the task at hand.

Standing back up, Lena made her way to the common area after checking on him one more time, intent on finding the ship's medical supplies. As Peter had shown her before, he had this Med Kit that was capable of diagnosing general health issues so she hoped it'd be able to identify the drug, or at the very least tell her if it was some kind of dangerous health hazard. She thankfully found it stashed away on a cabinet, and rushed back to Peter's side with it in hand.

Booting it up, she pressed it against Peter's chest and followed the instructions, which included taking a sample of his saliva. She'd get back at him for this later, but for now she was only focused on making sure he was okay.

It took a couple of moments but the Med Kit managed to identify the drug in Peter's system as some kind of fast-acting sedative when administered to humans, but otherwise harmless. Or non-lethal. _During the body's expulsion of the drug, the subject may experience muscle pain, nausea and fever,_ it read and Lena sighed, but was happy enough to find out that his body could expel it on its own without any treatment.

Setting the Med Kit aside, Lena took a minute to examine Peter's face. He seemed fine, albeit completely knocked out, with some small droplets of sweat appearing on his skin.

With a sigh, Lena moved to remove his boots and then her jacket – she might be here a while.

\---

An hour or so later, Peter's eyelids began to flutter. His sweating had only gotten worse with the beginnings of the fever the Med Kit had described, and all Lena could do was sit next to him and press a warm towel to his forehead to try to make him comfortable.

Eventually, Peter's eyes fluttered open.

"Peter?" She asked, tentatively.

He blinked up at her, but his eyes were glassy and unfocused.

"Peter?" She repeated, trying to draw his attention.

"...Mom?" He croaked out.

It took her a moment to register what was happening, and when she did she pressed a hand against his forehead only to confirm her suspicions – his fever had spiked, and he was probably having some kind of fevered dream about his mother. Lena pursued her lips as she retracted her hand from his forehead, but froze halfway when she felt a light touch on her side. Looking down, she saw that it was his hand lightly tugging at her shirt.

"Mom…" He croaked out again and his eyes fluttered shut.

His fingers remained on her shirt for a few more seconds before it went limp, but on reflex Lena caught it as it fell back down.

Holding on to his hand, Lena glanced up at his face.

Despite all the bravado and the cocky front he put up, Peter always had the soul of a child. She guessed it was because he'd been taken from Earth as one, and his only connection to his home were the memories he had from that time – but Lena had never seen him sporting such a child-like vulnerability than he had on that moment. Right then, he looked just like a little boy calling out for his mom.

She'll never know what that kind of bond is like, as her parents dumped her for adoption the minute she was born (or so she assumed). Whatever it is, though, it's something that's still haunting Peter to this day.

Lena set his hand back down against his stomach, her own lingering a little more than necessary before pulling away.

\---

Lena wasn't worried, but she was kinda… worried.

Peter's fever wasn't going down and it had been over an hour since his last contact with the world of the living. Lena tried to make herself busy in the meantime, but resigned herself to sitting on the floor beside his bunk as she played games on her cell phone (which was pretty much its only use since she couldn't exactly make calls from outer space) to distract her mind. Halfway through an Angry Birds stage, Lena felt movement from behind her so she turned around, coming to face a stirring Peter.

Putting the phone away, she stood on her knees near his head. "Peter?" She called, hoping that he wouldn't be calling her _mom_ again anytime soon.

Peter blinked a couple of times and she was relieved to find his eyes looking a bit more focused than last time. Her relief was shot down as Peter broke into a loopy grin upon seeing her face. "…'ey, Len."

Well, at least he recognized her. "Peter? Are you okay?"

"…Sure…"

Lena opened her mouth to speak but stopped when his hand came up to pat her cheek. Her eyebrows shot up.

"…Glad you're 'ere…"

Peter dropped his hand, his loopy expression slowly turning into a frown. Seeing his throat twitch and chest heave made Lena snap back into focus, and she quickly grabbed the nearby trash bin she'd brought close for this exact occasion.

Lena wrinkled her nose as she watched Peter turn on his side and puke into the bin she held up. After hurling out the entirety of his stomach's contents, Peter flopped back down on the bed with a groan.

Lena set the bin down, but kept it close. "You're really gonna owe me one after this is over."

Suddenly the silly grin was back on his face. "'kay." And he fell back into unconsciousness.

\---

Peter woke up again later with no recollection of much anything and sporting an amped up version of a hangover.

"So you're saying I got drugged?" Peter asked as he rubbed a hand against his face.

"Yup." Lena answered, trying to sound cheery to hide the fact that she'd been more worried than she cared to admit. She handed him a glass of water as she came close to where he was sitting. "Next time, try to keep a watch on your own drink."

Peter grunted as he took a sip of the water. "I can't really remember anything at all. You said there were two women?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe… I got distracted because I was gonna get lucky."

"You were about to get _un_ lucky if I hadn't showed up." Lena snapped and turned around, heading back to the common area.

She hadn't meant to snap at him right then, but she couldn't help it. While he was unconscious she'd had plenty of time alone with her thoughts, and they more often than not drifted to what-if scenarios of what would have happened had she not pulled him out of the bar at that moment.

They weren't nice, and she doubted the reality would have been nice as well.

"Lena?" Peter called out, making her stop in her tracks.

Lena did her best to shake all worries from her face before she turned back to him. "Yeah?"

Peter's face was unusually serious and earnest as he spoke. "…Thanks."

She went quiet.

Lena regarded him for a moment in silence, until her mouth slowly morphed into a smile. "No problem." She turned around to leave, but then turned back quickly. "But you totally owe me one now. _I_ was about to get laid."

The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile as well. "Oh, _I'm sorry_ I ruined your evening. You should let me make up to you sometime." And he wiggled his eyebrows.

Lena's heart skipped a beat but she pushed it down with a grin, turning around to leave. "You wish."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously kids, if you go to a party never leave your drink unattended! Aaand this has been a PSA in form of fanfiction. Anyway, I'm not sure if you can call this angsty or fluff as it all works out in the end (otherwise it would have been a little too heavy for me to write), but I'm just a sucker for characters looking after one another when the other one is sick or hurt. So you can expect more of that. Hint hint. Also, we might even see some action next chapter (of the pew-pew kind, not the sexy one, sorry) so stay tuned!
> 
> And thank you again to everyone who's reading this and for the kudos! Feedback encourages me to write (and write faster) hehe.


	16. The Best Laid Plans Part I

"Seriously, where is it?" Lena muttered to herself. Grabbing the blanket off her bunk and searching underneath proved to be fruitless, as the plug adaptor she was looking for was nowhere to be found.

She was sure she'd put it alongside the other ones but apparently not, and now she was stuck on a quest to find the missing object. Unfortunately for her, it was like finding a needle in a haystack – the thing was the size of her thumb, and she had no idea where it could be. She had already searched the common area and had moved to the bunks, hoping she had forgotten it there somehow, but so far no luck.

Throwing the blanket back onto the bunk, Lena knelt down to peek underneath but the only thing she could find were her boots. She lifted those, checking if the adaptor hadn't rolled down there somewhere, before turning around to look under Peter's bunk. Scrunching up her nose at the mess of discarded candy wrappers, she tossed a couple of them aside only to lift her eyebrows in astonishment at the fact that she actually found what she was looking for.

How it got down there was a whole other mystery.

Lena groaned as she lifted herself up. " _Why_ are you such a slob?" She spoke up directed at Peter who was coming down the stairs. "Trash cans exist for a reason."

She dusted off her knees as she waited for a response. When she got none, Lena lifted her head to look at the man in question.

Peter was staring intently at the table computer, seemingly not having heard her. She could tell from the 'serious business' look on his face that it was, well, serious business.

Lena approached him. "What is it?"

Peter was broken out of his thoughts as he lifted his head to look at her. "Just got a new job." He said. "It's big."

"How big?"

"Pretty big."

She nodded. "Alright. What's it about?"

Peter took a moment to collect his thoughts. "There's this guy, his name is Driggo. He runs a mining operation on this small, mostly empty, forest planet a little ways from here, and according to our source he came across something… interesting, recently."

"And they want you to steal it."

"Yep."

"So it's just another sneak, steal, run? We've done this a million times before."

Peter sighed. "Not exactly – apparently the security is pretty tight. And this Driggo guy… not very friendly."

"When are they ever?"

"True."

Lena took a moment to study Peter's face and judging from the look there it was obvious that this wasn't your usual 'go there and steal x' job – otherwise Peter would be treating it with a lot more levity. If Peter was serious, you just knew shit was really, _really_ serious.

"If it's so secure, why not send in more Ravagers?" Lena asked.

"Too many ships would set of their sensors." Peter said. "The Milano alone should be small enough that it could pass undetected, but any more than that would be too risky."

"What kind of 'risky' are we talking about here?"

"Probably shot out of the sky if we get detected. Contact says they've got anti-aircraft artillery all over their base."

"Great." Lena set her hands on her hips and she started pacing around Peter. "What about on soil? What kind of security?"

"Armed guards. Lots of armed guards."

_As always._

"How valuable is this thing, anyway?" She asked.

"It's some kind of pricy, extremely rare mineral that Driggo managed to dig up by accident. And we're talking _extremely_ rare here – apparently what they want us to steal is the size of a football, but enough that the pay is _huge_."

"All this trouble for some kind of football made out of gold…"

"I'm preeetty sure it's more valuable than gold. Nobody cares about gold out here."

"Alright, so what's the plan?"

\---

The plan was relatively simple. In theory.

First, they'd sneak through the sensors with the Milano onto the planet, landing somewhere close but far enough not to be detected. Second, and it starts getting trickier from there, they would find the communications tower located outside the main base which, according to their intel, was unguarded enough that Lena would be able to tap into their network from there. Third would be hacking into said network to shut down all the security measures surrounding the storage facility long enough for Peter to sneak in, grab the not-gold football rock thing, and get out. Then they would meet in the Milano, hightail off the planet, deliver the item, and hopefully be off to have a few commemorative drinks while being a lot more units richer.

That was the plan. In theory.

First step worked out just fine – they were able to sneak through and land the Milano undetected. It was after they had located the tower that things started to go south.

"I thought there weren't any guards here!" Lena angrily whispered at Peter as they hid behind a tree.

The tower was surrounded by a forest (no surprise there as the only place _without_ trees was around the main base where the mining occurred) which provided a nice cover for them to study the surroundings. The tower was there just as they were told it would be, however, a group of patrolling guards were marching back and forth around it.

"Why can't things go according to plan at least once?" Peter grumbled before sighing to recompose himself. "Guess I have no other choice then."

Before he could push himself off the tree, Lena grabbed his arm. "Wait, what are you going to do?"

"Try to take them out quietly. Hopefully no one will notice anything and we can continue with the plan."

Seeing no other way around it, Lena nodded in agreement.

Peter nodded back. "You stay here while I deal with them. You got your stun gun?"

Lena felt for the stun gun strapped to her thigh – Peter had given it to her a while back and taught her how to use it (as well as a couple of other guns) 'just in case'. "Yeah." She answered.

Even though she stayed mostly out of the line of fire, Lena knew how ugly things could get in their line of work and she also knew she would not be able to avoid that kind of conflict forever. She wasn't sure _how_ she would deal when it came down to it, though, which was why she was in no hurry to rush into a firefight any time soon. She had only really used the stun gun a couple of times before, once during a job on an unsuspecting guard, and once during a bar fight (Peter's fault) when the other guy had pulled out a knife. Lena hoped she could keep its usage to a minimum, but still, better safe than sorry.

She was broken out of her thoughts when Peter activated his mask and pulled out his blasters.

\---

"It's clear. Come on out." Peter's voice rang out through her comm and she released the breath she was holding. Pushing herself off her crouched position, Lena poked her head from behind her cover to survey the area, and once she was sure there really wasn't anyone around she made a dash for the tower.

Passing the unconscious bodies of the patrolling guards, Lena found Peter at the base of the staircase leading up to the top.

"The terminal must be upstairs." He said, deactivating his mask. "Let's go."

Lena wasted no time following him up.

The tower was much taller than she'd anticipated, though, the top peeking out above the already tall trees of the forest. At the top they circled the tower until they found the computer terminal on the opposite side from the stairs, and Lena was quick to get to work.

"So, is it doable?" Peter asked, looking over her shoulder as she accessed the computer.

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure."

"A little more than a 'pretty sure' would be nice."

She shot him a look. "Give me two minutes and I'll give you all the confirmation you need."

Peter opened his mouth to say something but decided against it, turning around instead to give her some much needed breathing room.

Lena got to work diligently, facing only with some minor difficulty while passing the inner security measures. Soon enough she was inside the system, and was quick to find the options to disable security surrounding the storage area.

"Got it." She said. "I can do it from here."

Peter nodded. "Good."

"When I disable the security, it won't be long until they notice something is wrong." She warned.

"I know." Peter said. They'd figured this was the case back when they were coming up with the plan. "Which is why you'll only disable it once I'm near the storage and I give you the signal."

"Yeah."

"And after you do that, you run straight back to the ship and wait for me. Got it?"

"I _know_."

"Good." He paused. "Well, I'm off. Wish me luck!" He said, walking towards the stairs.

"Be careful!" She called out before he could disappear from sight. Peter gave her a wave in response.

\---

_What's taking him so long?_ She thought nervously as she fidgeted on the spot.

Lena had sat down on the ground while waiting for Peter to give her the signal, holding tightly onto her data pad that was connected to the terminal. She nervously counted the time passing until Peter finally spoke through her comm.

"I'm close." He said. "Get ready."

Lena's body tensed as she finished the preparations, with all that was missing being the press of a button. It took another few minutes until Peter spoke again.

"Do it. _Now_."

And she pressed the button.

Scanning over the new information on her pad, she confirmed her success in disabling the security. "Done."

"Alright, now get the hell out of there."

"On my way."

Although she was supposed to be leaving now, Lena had to first run a scan through the network to make sure that every security measure was properly disabled, lest Peter get caught in something that slipped through her. As she checked every box of her to-disable list, something caught her attention in a _very_ bad way.

"Oh no." She muttered.

"What? What is it?" Peter whispered through her comm.

"Why didn't I see it before? Dammit—"

_"What is it?_ "

"The system has an automated reset mechanism." She explained at the same time she began typing on her data pad. "It resets itself every five minutes."

"Yeah, but _what does it mean_?"

"It means—" She paused to finish typing a command. "I need to stay here to keep the system disabled, otherwise it'll just reset itself when the time is up and boom all the security goes up again."

There was a pause on the other side before Peter spoke again. "Lena..."

"It's fine!" She said quickly. "I can stay here. You just do your thing, and do it quickly."

There was another pause. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah." She said more confidently than she actually felt. "I can do this."

"Okay. I'll be quick."

The line went silent, and Lena focused back on the data pad in her hands.

It's not like she wouldn't be able to bypass the reset system – that was simple. She could handle everything the computer could throw at her, but what she really was afraid of were the _guards_. What if the guards Peter knocked out woke up? What if there was another patrol passing by? She wasn't sure if she could handle _that_.

Shaking her head, Lena decided not to worry about it for the time being.

Once the first five minutes were up and all she had to do was essentially re-disable the systems before they could get back up, she tried finding a way to make the disabled security a permanent change to the system so that the reset mechanism wouldn't touch it and thus allowing her to leave the tower. She wasn't having much luck, however, and by the fifth reset she could only pray Peter would just find the damn thing already.

She was halfway through the seventh reset when a buzzing noise caught her ears.

Lena raised her head in alarm, trying to figure out the source of the sound. Setting the data pad down, she crawled over to the edge of the platform to peer down at the ground below, only to immediately scoot backwards while cursing her luck that _of course another patrol group came by. Why did I go ahead and jinx it?_

Her heart began racing a mile a minute as she unstrapped the stun gun from its holster and clutched it in her hand.

_There's nothing wrong. Just move on. Don't notice anything._ She chanted in her head.

The data pad beeped to remind her of the reset time approaching and she jumped on the spot. Hastily moving to re-disable the system again, Lena hoped with all her might that the guards didn't notice anything was off.

The platform at the top was large enough that she could hide herself if she pressed her body against the giant column in the middle, and the ground was made of solid concrete so no one would be able to see anything from down below. Peter had also left the guards' bodies hidden among the foliage, so the patrol group down there had no reason to check up where she was, right?

Her heart beat loudly against her chest as she listened intently to any suspicious sounds, although the noise from the forest kept her from being able to hear what was going on down below. Several minutes passed, another reset time went by, and Lena dared to hope the guards had just gone away.

Metallic footsteps coming from the stairs shot her hope down in a flash.

_They're coming here…!_

Lena gripped her stun gun even tighter as she slowly raised herself up to a standing position, body tensed as the footsteps came closer. She counted at least two guards, and in her mind she had already started devising a plan of action.

The footsteps came closer, circling around the giant column she was pressed against. She could see the shadow of a guard approaching from the right, and the minute a body part came into view she fired her gun straight at it, watching as it hit the guard right in the chest making him collapse in a fit of convulsions. Lena raised her gun again to fire at the second guard, only to realize he had actually circled _the other way around_ and had come up right behind her.

Lena turned around as fast as she could to shoot the guard, but only managed to knock into his gun which (thankfully) knocked his aim away from her before he could open fire. Unfortunately for her, the impact sent her stun gun flying out of her hands.

With her gun out of reach, Lena desperately wrestled with the guard's gun to keep him from shooting her straight in the face. He was stronger than her, however, and she felt herself be pushed backwards towards the railing.

In one last desperate move, Lena managed to use her weight to shift them around at the last second, and the momentum sent the guard not only tumbling into the rail, but straight over it.

Time seemed to be in slow motion as Lena watched the guard fall several feet down until he hit the ground with a resounding crash. He didn't move again.

Her thoughts slowly caught up to her as she stood there frozen, realizing what she'd just done. However, she didn't have much time to dwell on that as a blow from behind knocked her out cold.

\---

"I got it, let's go!" Peter called out the minute he stepped into the Milano.

Dropping the bag containing the cargo (which was thankfully much lighter than he'd expected), he ran up to the cockpit intent on starting up the ship. When he was met with emptiness and silence, no Lena on sight, Peter stopped in his tracks, a sense of dread coming over him.

"Lena?" He called out.

Seeing that she wasn't in the cockpit or on the upper floor, Peter jumped down the stairs into the common area.

She wasn't there either.

"Lena?!" He called out louder.

The lack of answer made his heart beat faster.

Turning on his comm, Peter tried calling her through there. "Lena? Hey, are you there?!" He said, but only got silence as a response. "Lena, come on! Answer me! Lena!"

A million thoughts ran through his head at what might have happened to her. The positive side of him said that she might have gotten lost on her way over, or was just taking longer than he'd expected. The negative side, that was currently drowning out the positive one, had a million other explanations, each worse than the previous one.

Snapping into focus, Peter rushed to the main screen, turning it on and connecting his communicator to it. He tapped into Lena's signal that was thankfully still transmitting, and ran a search for her location. When the computer brought up the map, his heart dropped.

She was in the middle of the main base.

"Oh, no. This is bad. This is _bad._ "

What the hell was she doing there? Did she try to do something on her own? Did they—

The computer started beeping with an incoming video call from Lena's signal. Peter didn't think twice before accepting it, but his heart sank even more when he saw that the person on the other side was _not_ Lena.

"Hello." The man on the screen said. "I am assuming you are the woman's partner? She clearly did not steal that _highly valuable_ material from me by herself."

Peter swallowed – there was no doubt about who the man was. "What if I am? Where is she?" He spoke tightly.

Driggo smiled, although it was more of a snarl than anything else. "You see, you stole something from me, and I want it back. So," he stepped aside, motioning to something behind him, "I took something that you might want to have back as well."

Peter's breath caught on his throat at the sight of Lena being held up by two guards, looking a little (a lot) scared but overall – thankfully – seemingly unharmed. He didn't have much time to assess her condition when Driggo stepped back into the center, effectively blocking his view.

"So you want a trade, is that it?" Peter said, trying to keep his cool even though his hands were clenched at his sides. "Fine. Let's do it. I'll give you the rock and you give her back, _alive_."

Driggo nodded, turning his back to the screen. "I'm surprised. I didn't realize loyalty was a thing with you Ravagers."

"Yeah, well—" Peter started.

"Tell me," Driggo interrupted, but he had turned to address someone off screen, "how long does it take for a human to bleed to death?"

Peter frowned in confusion as Driggo nodded at an unheard response. Before the Terran could get another word out, Driggo had grabbed something from his belt which Peter briefly registered as a knife and in a flash had it _driven straight into Lena's gut_.

"No!" Peter yelled, but was hopeless to do anything else.

He could only watch as Lena's eyes grew wide, as Driggo took the knife out and dark red blood started pouring out, as Lena's knees gave out from under her and the only thing holding her up were the two guards gripping too tightly at her arms. A wave of both red hot anger and crushing despair washed over him.

"What the hell did you do?!" Peter yelled out again as it was the only thing he could do in that moment.

Driggo shrugged, pulling out some kind of fabric to wipe the blood away from the blade. "I can't have you calling out your other Ravager friends, now can I? Now you're on a time limit – bring back the mineral and I'll let you take your _partner._ Unless you want her to bleed to death, of course."

Peter had a thousand curse words on the tip of his tongue, but one look at Lena feebly trying to press a hand against her wound held him back from saying them.

_There's no time._

"Just tell me where." He spoke through gritted teeth.

Driggo smiled at him and his calmness nearly set Peter off again. "Main base, northern bay. I'm sure you can find out where that is." He said, and with a wave ended the call.

Peter was left staring at the blank screen for a moment before his mind snapped back into focus and he bolted out of the common area.

_There's no time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Action! Drama! Excitement! This was going to be just one big chapter but then I overdid it so I decided to split it up. So I ended it on a cliffhanger. Bwahaha.
> 
> I have to admit I kinda went outside of my comfort zone with this chapter so I hope it's not too shabby – I'm really not used to writing action stuff. I already have the next chapter ready (as I usually do) so hopefully it won't take long to look it over and edit it and have it posted! Also again thank you everyone who's reading this story, and don't forget that feedback makes author write faster (and better!) *winkwinknudgenudge*


	17. The Best Laid Plans Part II

Finding the main base wasn't hard, all he had to do was track the location of Lena's signal and it led him right to it.

During the trek (more like mad dash, actually) from the ship to the base Peter had enough time to think about something else than just _I need to get to Lena now_ despite it being on the forefront of his mind. Mainly, about the concern that they weren't just going to let them go after the trade was done – from what he'd heard about Driggo (and personally experienced – Peter thought while gritting his teeth), the guy was incredibly vindictive not to mention ruthless, and chances were that people would start shooting at him at one point. Though he wasn't really worried about himself, just _her_ – he didn't have any idea in what shape he would find her, or how much blood she had left, or if the knife had hit any vital points or not… He could only run and hope it wasn't too late.

_Hang on, Lena, I'm coming._

\---

"Took you long enough." Driggo said as Peter walked through the oversized bay doors with his hands up.

Just like Peter had expected, all the guards – and there were a lot – had their guns trained on him, ready to shoot if he tried anything.

"Sorry, I had to take a little detour." Peter said, slowly lifting the strap of the bag holding the mineral from his shoulder and lowering it onto the ground. "Here's your damn rock."

Driggo clapped his hands together. "Very good! Now—"

"Don't you want to know what my detour was?"

The alien man stared at the Terran, unimpressed. "Not particularly, no."

"Trust me, it's important."

He gave one long exasperated sigh before speaking. "What is it?"

"I planted a bomb."

Driggo's eyes suddenly took a sharper look. "You did what?"

"I planted a bomb." Peter repeated. "Somewhere around… somewhere. And guess what – it's set to detonate in under five minutes!"

Driggo tensed, and all the guards raised their guns higher at him.

"Unless," Peter produced a data pad out of his satchel, "I reset the timer with this right here. And before any of you can think of shooting me – it's password protected, and only I know the password. So here's what's going to happen: you're not going to shoot me or try to kill me while I go get my— partner, and I'll keep resetting the timer until we're both back _safe_ in our ship, and only then I'll disable the bomb. If you do try anything such as, you know, killing me, the bomb will go off and everybody dies. It's that simple."

"And how do I know you're not lying? As far as we know, you're bluffing."

"I'm sure the explosion in," Peter looked down at the data pad, "under two minutes will be all the proof you need."

Driggo stared at him long and hard, trying to catch any sliver of a lie hiding behind his eyes. Peter started getting antsy at the fact that this exchange was already going on for too long and they were wasting so much time that Lena didn't have, but he refused to let anything show unless he wanted his plan to fall into shambles. Instead, he wiggled his fingers over the data pad to illustrate that the clock was ticking.

It felt like an eternity passed before Driggo spoke again. " _Fine._ She's in the third cell following this corridor." He motioned behind him.

Peter made a show of resetting the timer on the data pad before putting it away. "Remember, if I don't do this again in five minutes we all go boom."

Driggo clenched his jaw as Peter walked past him.

Peter hurriedly went down the indicated corridor, and the minute he rounded a corner he broke into a full blown sprint. Activating his mask, he turned on Lena's locator just to make sure that he was going in the right direction and was relieved to find out that he was.

_Why is this corridor so damn long?!_ He briefly thought while searching for the right door, panic rising again with each entrance he passed that wasn't the right one.

Eventually he came across a door labelled Cell 3 and he didn't know whether to feel dread or relief at the fact that there wasn't a single guard on sight.

_Come on, Len, be okay. Be okay._

Pushing the door open, Peter stepped inside.

His heart jumped in relief when he spotted Lena slumped against a wall – deathly pale, but still alive. She was feebly clutching her bundled up jacket to her wound, and she lifted her head as much as she could to look at him when he entered.

"Lena!" Peter rushed to her side, deactivating his mask and kneeling down next to her. One of his hands came up to the side of her head, if not to help her hold it up then to reassure him that she was okay and he'd made it in time. Peering down at her stomach, however, caused him to grimace at how her previously white shirt was thoroughly stained red.

"…Peter—" Lena croaked out, her breathing coming out in short gasps.

"Hey, hey. It's okay. I'm going to get you out of here." He said, trying to reassure her.

Lena swallowed with difficulty but eventually nodded, and Peter slipped an arm under her knees and another around her back.

"I'm going to need you to keep that pressure on, okay?" He said before activating his mask and lifting her up in his arms. Lena let out a strangled groan at the movement and Peter whispered a small "Sorry" down at her.

Lena's head slumping down against his collarbone sent Peter into a brief panic, but once he started feeling her gaspy breaths against his chest he calmed down again. Tightening his grip around her, Peter cautiously made his way outside – the corridor was still empty, but he didn't want to take any chances after that _massive_ lie he told to ensure their safety.

Moving as fast as he could while still trying to ensure Lena didn't get jostled much in the process, Peter went down the opposite way he came in. He hoped their intel had been right about the base's layout and going down this way would lead him to the next entrance over – otherwise he'd be screwed.

Luckily, the corridor did lead to other entrance. Also luckily – and Peter didn't want to jinx it – it seemed to be mostly empty. He figured most of the guards were concentrated on the northern bay where he came in.

The giant metal doors were closed, however, and soon enough he began hearing shouting from the corridor behind him.

_Guess they must have found out about my bluff._

Wasting no time, Peter found a staircase leading to an upper platform where there were windows to the outside. They were big enough for him to get through, and the trees outside were relatively close enough that he could reach using his boots' rocket boosters.

That last part proved to be tricky as Lena's added weight and him being unable to use his arms made it hard for balancing, but he had no other choice than to go through with it. He landed clumsily on a bigger branch of the closest tree and was slightly alarmed at Lena's lack of response to the impact, but he could still feel her breathing against him so he decided to push on. Hopping from branch to branch, Peter eventually landed on solid ground and outside of the base.

Night had fallen on the forest and Peter was thankful for the cover the darkness provided him. It was easy enough to navigate using his mask's night vision, and all he had to do was follow the signal back to the ship.

\---

He had never felt more relieved stepping inside the Milano than at that very moment.

Rushing over to the bunk area Peter set Lena down on her bed, only stopping to make sure that she was still alive after falling unconscious. He then ran over to the medical supply cabinet, desperately looking for that one thing that _dammit he was sure he had it—Found it!_

It was a special gel that would help close the wound and stop the bleeding, and Peter wasted no time in running back to Lena and applying it to her stomach. However, this would only help to keep her from losing even more blood, and if he didn't get her some actual medical treatment soon she would…

Shaking his head, Peter carefully strapped Lena onto the bunk with the emergency harness and ran up to the cockpit – he hoped to be able to make a swift escape, but in case things got bumpy he didn't want her to get thrown around in her current state.

Good thing too as things did get bumpy – with Driggo and his crew already aware of their presence, the Milano wasn't able to get by undetected through their sensors and, much to his dismay, the anti-aircraft turrets were deployed. Putting all the power into the engines in hopes of getting out of range as soon as possible, Peter swerved and dodged all incoming projectiles, briefly lamenting the lack of a co-pilot when it came to handling the navigation system in high pressure situations.

It seemed forever until he was able to get out of range and out of the planet's orbit, thanking his luck that Driggo's firepower was focused on land and that there were no combat spaceships waiting for him out there. He didn't relax, however, until he was well away from that forest planet and with the route set back to the Ravager's mothership.

Part of him wanted to manually fly back to the mothership as fast as he could while the other part, the one that won in the end, didn't want to leave Lena down there all by herself. So after setting the auto-pilot to go in top speed Peter unbuckled his seat belt and walked downstairs with heavy but hurried steps.

Lena was thankfully still strapped down to the bed when he got there, and Peter carefully undid the harness now that they were out of danger. 'Out of danger' being used very loosely here – Peter grimaced as he looked down at her stomach. The gel had served its purpose, forming a thick protective layer over and inside the wound to close it up, and it would have served as a local anesthetic if she were awake, but just because blood stopped coming out didn't mean things were suddenly okay.

Peter rushed to and back from the medical supply cabinet, bringing with him the Med Kit and the case containing an assortment of medical serums. While he let the Med Kit work in checking her vitals, Peter prepared the serum that was specific to help deal with blood loss – and suddenly he'd never been more thankful for Lena's nagging to keep the medical supplies in stock.

Just as the Med Kit displayed what he already knew – vitals were weak but still there, no major organs damaged, suffering from blood loss – Peter delicately injected the serum in Lena's arm and hoped for the best. Putting the serum case away, he let the Med Kit on still monitoring her vitals.

_What now?_ He thought nervously.

He had done all he could, but still felt like he needed to do _more_.

Noticing her head laid in a strange angle, probably due to all the swerving he did while avoiding being shot down from the sky, Peter's restless hands went up to cradle her head and set it in what he thought was a more comfortable position. Peter's grimace deepened as his fingers came across a noticeable bump on the back of her head, and his eyes were subsequently drawn to a forming bruise on her right cheek, his thumb absentmindedly caressing it as if he could make it go away.

Pulling his hands away, he let them rest against his tights as he sat down next to her on the bunk and waited.

\---

Lena came to slowly, becoming acutely aware of a throbbing sensation in her belly. She blinked herself into wakefulness, grimacing when the harsh light from above hit her eyes.

_Where am I?_

She stared at the ceiling for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. Suddenly the memories came rushing back to her – her capture, being taken to the base, getting stabbed – and she was sent into a state of panic that prompted her to look around in alarm for any signs of guards.

Instead, she found Peter at her side.

He was sitting on a chair next to her bed, an elbow propped up on the mattress with his head resting on his hand. He had his headphones on and his eyes were closed, and she couldn't tell if he was sleeping or not. The sight of him helped calm her down, and Lena allowed herself a better look at her surroundings.

The place was familiar, and she soon recognized it as a room in the Ravagers' medical bay. Another set of memories came back to her, and even though those were much foggier she remembered Peter finding her in that cell. She could only assume he got them out.

"Peter?" She rasped out, her throat dry and in desperate need for some water. Peter didn't answer her, and she could faintly hear music coming from his headphones.

Raising up the hand that was closest to him, Lena lightly tapped his arm to get his attention. His eyes opened, blinking in confusion before he noticed that she was awake.

"Hey!" He said, taking off his headphones and straightening himself up. Pulling the chair closer to the bed, he continued. "How are you feeling?"

She tried wetting her tongue, but to no avail. "Like I just got stabbed." She spoke dryly.

Peter cast his eyes downward, fidgeting with the Walkman in his hands. "Sorry."

"Unless it was you who secretly stabbed me, you don't really need to apologize."

"Yeah, well…" Peter glanced up at her. "Still."

Lena tried wetting her tongue again but her mouth was drier than that desert planet they went to that one time. Noticing her discomfort, Peter got up to grab her a glass of water which she accepted gratefully.

"What happened?" She asked once her mouth no longer felt like sandpaper.

Peter sat back down on the chair. "Uh… I went to the base. Made a trade with Driggo. Got us out before he could start shooting us anyway." Reaching into the jacket that was thrown over the chair's backrest, Peter put the Walkman away before continuing. "Then I came straight back here, and Doc stitched you up. We're lucky he didn't… hit anything important." He sighed. "The biggest problem was the blood loss, but thankfully there's synthetic blood to help – I mean, it's not as good as real blood, but it'll help you heal—"

Lena decided to interrupt Peter who was starting to ramble. "What about blood transfusions?"

Peter snorted. "With whose blood, Yondu's? There aren't exactly a lot of humans around… and apparently we're not compatible. Blood-wise."

Exhaling, briefly noting the lack of pain which probably meant she was high on some kind of pain medication, Lena smoothed a hand over the sheets. "So what's the verdict, Doctor? Am I going to live?"

Peter's hesitation nearly sent Lena into a panic.

"I _am_ going to live, right? Right?"

Peter snapped himself out of it. "Yeah! Yeah. Absolutely." He spoke confidently, but deflated again immediately afterwards.

Lena didn't have to be a genius to see that something was bothering him, so she shot him an expectant look.

He sighed. "It's just that— there was a moment there I was afraid you weren't." He wrung his hands together. "So, I'm… sorry. You shouldn't have gotten hurt."

Peter's eyes were flickering between his hands and the bedsheets, risking a glance at her face only once. On the other hand, Lena was staring at him long and hard, trying to figure out what exactly was going on through his head and why was he acting so unlike himself. The drugs probably didn't help.

"You know…" She started, looking down as well. "You're not responsible for what happens to me. You don't have to feel bad if I fuck up and get myself hurt in the process."

Lena looked up to gauge Peter's reaction and became puzzled at the indignant look he was shooting straight at her.

"I _know_ I'm not responsible for you." He said firmly. "That doesn't mean I'm not going to feel _bad_ when I see you getting hurt."

Lena found herself without a comeback and she wasn't sure _why_. Was it really so difficult to wrap her head around the fact that yeah, Peter would feel bad if she got hurt – especially considering that if their situations were reversed she would be brimming with worry over his wellbeing? Isn't that what friends do? They… care for each other.

"Thank you." She finally said. "For coming for me."

As Lena looked up again, her gaze met Peter's. The corner of his mouth lifted into a smile as he spoke. "Yeah, well. That's what friends are for, right?"

Lena couldn't help but smile back. "Yeah."

\---

BONUS:

"Why am I still wearing my dirty clothes, though?" Lena asked, tugging at her bloodstained shirt.

"Would you rather I had let one of the Ravagers undress you?" Peter asked, an amused eyebrow raised.

Lena narrowed her eyes. Even Doc, the Ravager's resident doctor, didn't inspire much confidence and safety in her so she was mostly glad no one got to see – and handle – her naked.

_There's one Ravager I wouldn't mind though_ — _whoa, what?_

Lena mentally slapped herself as her eyes wandered over to Peter. Whatever drug they had given her to stop the pain was clearly affecting her ability to think properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to insert the bonus part inside the actual story but then it didn't fit, but it was too good to throw it away haha. Also I had to google what those things on his boots were and I don't even know if I got them right, oh well. Anyway, here's the exciting conclusion to the two parter! Wouldn't it have been a shame if I had taken another two year hiatus before this chapter? …Bwahaha
> 
> But fret not that I'm still motivated with this story (especially with the second movie coming up), and the feedback and kudos help out a lot! So thank you for reading and until next time!


	18. Training Under a Capable Tutor

Dragging herself into the Milano, Lena let out a long painful groan to illustrate how she was currently feeling.

"Wow, you look like you just had the shit beaten out of you." Peter commented as she walked past him.

"That's because I just had the shit beaten out of me." Lena retorted, making a beeline to their medical supplies. The cold compress she was looking for was exactly where she'd left it, and she was quick to grab it and press it against a forming bruise on her cheek.

"Greill not making it easy, huh?"

"I don't want him to make it easy." She replied, pulling the compress away from her cheek. Lena pulled her shirt over her head being left with only her sports bra (or the space equivalent), and she pressed the compress to the left side of her ribs in hopes of diminishing the pain there.

While it was true that ever since she started going out on missions with Peter she'd had no shortage of brushes with danger that left her with bruises, cuts and other wounds, their last incursion to that forest planet had left her a little… shaken up.

It was the first time she came close to dying.

She'd been terrified when she woke up in a prison cell, only to be taken to the big boss himself, get stabbed in the gut and thrown right back into that dreary cubicle. The pain was unlike anything she'd ever felt before, but even through it she still clung onto hope that Peter would come for her – which he did – so she did her best to stay alive until then. At one point though, as time ticked away and blood continued to pour out, that hope began giving way to a cold and dreadful feeling – that _this is it, this is how I die_ – and her mind started questioning if Peter was really willing to risk his life to save hers after all.

But he did. She remembered the relief in seeing him walk through the door, the genuine concern in his eyes. She remembered being lifted up and carried, exhaustion taking over her body as she focused on the warmth that surrounded her compared to that cold dark cell, on the familiar scent of his leather jacket instead of the smell of her own blood. And then—nothing else, until she woke up in the Ravagers' medical bay, stitched up and out of danger with Peter by her side.

It took a while for the events of that day to catch up to her. The fact that she had actually _really_ almost _died_ was very slow to sink in, but when it did she found herself overcome with a hopeless kind of feeling that maybe she was in _way_ over her head with all this. She was just a hacker, after all, what was she doing going right into the action where people with guns and really huge knives would kill her and stab her in the gut the first chance they got?

So after letting herself wallow in her misery for a few days while she let her body heal (in a surprisingly shorter time than expected – medicine in space was unsurprisingly more developed than Terra's as it turns out), Lena decided to do something about it. And it involved learning how to fight.

Peter was the first person she'd asked for help, but unfortunately he was a terrible teacher when it came to hand-to-hand combat. From what she came to realize, Peter never really had any formal training in that area, having picked up his fighting skills the hard way – by punching and getting punched and doing it over and over again until he learned something out of it – so learning from him was out of the question. He was much better at teaching her how to shoot, though, and she was getting far better at handling guns than she ever thought she was capable of.

(She insistently pushed back the thought that she had already killed someone, although not by shooting. One issue at a time.)

Then Peter came up with the idea to ask a Ravager for help, and Lena was wholly skeptical about it. Somehow he managed to talk her into it eventually, and she was introduced to Greill, a Ravager that specialized in hand-to-hand combat and who did _not_ greet her with a death glare like most of the others did – so at least that was promising. It took some convincing (and money), but he eventually agreed to teach her the basics.

It wasn't as bad as she'd been expecting – Greill proved himself knowledgeable in that area and a decent enough teacher, his leaner build a much better match to Lena's than the bulky bodies of many other Ravagers – so Lena took every chance she could get to have a lesson with him.

If you asked her, she was getting better. That didn't mean the lessons didn't end with Lena getting her ass handed to her and a body full of bruises.

"Are you making progress, at least?" Peter asked.

Lena sat down on one of the common area's seats, still pressing the compress against her ribs. "I think so."

Peter nodded, glancing up from where he was tinkering with his blasters. He did a double take when he noticed her state of undress.

Lena pushed her chest forward, stretching her back as she moved the compress to the side of her shoulder. Greill was a good teacher, but boy was he unforgiving.

Noticing the silence that had fallen over the common area, Lena looked up to see what Peter was doing.

"Peter, stop staring at my boobs."

Peter averted his eyes. "I'm—I'm not."

She snorted. "Sure."

A moment of silence passed. Lena figured Peter had gone back to working on his blasters.

"Well, those are nice boobs." Peter spoke up.

Lena let out a laugh in disbelief as she moved the compress lower on her arm. _Unbelievable._

"'Sides," Peter started again, "it's not like I've never caught _you_ staring."

Lena straightened herself. "Staring at what, exactly?"

"Me. After I get out of the shower without a shirt on. What, you didn't think I'd noticed?" He said with a cocky grin.

Lena tried to keep her expression as passive as possible. "Yeah—I stared because you were dripping wet leaving puddles all over the ship."

There was another brief pause. "Bet that wasn't the only thing dripping wet."

She threw the compress down at the table. " _Ohmygod_." Covering her face with her hands, Lena laughed quietly to herself at Peter's ridiculousness.

"Uh-huh." He nodded, a crooked grin full of playfulness and self-satisfaction stamped on his face as he turned back to his blasters as if to say _case closed_. Which was fine by her, Lena had no come back for _that_.

\---

"You want me to spar with you?" Peter asked, eyebrow raised.

"Yeah." Lena replied as if to say _duh_. "I need to test my skills on someone who's not some kind of alien Bruce Lee. Gotta start from the bottom."

Peter let out an indignant _hey_. Lena shrugged.

"What, you don't think you can beat me?" She provoked. Lena knew very well who was likely to win this fight, but it was fun riling Peter up.

"' _Don't think you can beat me'._ " Peter repeated with a mocking tone. "Please."

She grinned. "Let's go, then."

They made their way down into the Milano's cargo hold that was currently mostly empty, and after arranging a few crates to the side they had enough room to spar.

Lena hadn't seen Greill in a while due to conflicting schedules, you could say. Whenever he was free, they were off on a mission, whenever they were free he was off on a mission. She was starting to worry she would lose the progress she made if she went on too long without training, which was why she decided to enlist Peter's help as a sparring partner (and possibly punching bag).

"So," Peter spoke as he put his boots aside while she did the same, "how do we begin this?"

"Well…" Lena trailed off while approaching him.

Then she punched him.

Peter staggered backwards in surprise, clutching his nose. "Ow! What the hell!" He pulled his hand away as he wrinkled his nose to check for any damage (there was none, she did hold back. A little). "A little warning next time."

She shrugged. "Okay. Here's a warning." And then she threw a kick at him.

This time Peter dodged it, and Lena followed it with another kick aimed at his stomach. Peter blocked it with his hand, and Lena took a step back, putting herself in a fighting stance. Lena's mouth slowly morphed into a challenging grin to which Peter answered in kind.

"Alright fine, if that's how you want it." He said before stepping forward.

\---

"I say I win." Peter panted in her ear.

"Pfft, no." Lena panted back and tried wiggling out of his grip, but it only served to tighten his hold on her.

They'd ended up with her back to his chest, one of his arms holding her around her neck not tight enough to hurt, but enough that she couldn't break free from Peter's monstrous arms (seriously, she'd never stopped to consider how _built_ Peter was until she was trying to knock him down to the ground). It was certainly a different experience sparring with Peter than with Greill – whereas her teacher relied in techniques with quick and precise movements, Peter was a brawler who relied in strength and wit alone. Lena knew it was impossible to beat him with strength alone, but the techniques she'd learned helped her hold her own.

Lena squeezed her fingers against his arm, trying to wiggle out of his hold. She even tried stomping down on his feet with her own, but Peter simply lifted his foot out of reach. Letting out a frustrated breath, Lena slowly brought her struggling to a stop.

"Do you give up?" Peter spoke, his breath tickling her ear. Even though she couldn't see his face, she could _feel_ the smirk that was surely plastered there.

"No." She answered stubbornly.

"Oh, really?"

"Yup."

She could feel his chuckle rumbling against her back. "Maybe you should reconsider."

"Yeah… no."

"Alright then." He said and tightened his grip around her waist, pulling her flush against him.

Lena was momentarily distracted, suddenly becoming hyper aware of the lack of space between their bodies and every breath he took that she could feel against her back. Her fingers loosened their grip on his arm, and Peter must have taken it as a sign of her giving up as he also loosened his hold on her just a tiny bit. Just a bit, but enough to snap her back into action as she recalled a move she'd learned some time ago.

Taking a firmer hold of his arm and planting her feet securely on the ground, Lena bent her knees and flipped him over her shoulder.

Peter felt to the ground with a thud and a pained groan, and Lena wasted no time climbing on top of his stomach and lifting her arm as if in preparation of a punch. "Like I said, not giving up." She said, grinning.

"Not bad." Peter said after he recovered. "Did you learn that one from Greill?"

"Self-defense class in high school, actually. Although this," she shook her hand that was still in a punching pose, "was an added touch."

"Not bad." He repeated.

Lena was so giddy with getting one over Peter that she let her guard down, enough for him to take a hold of her and flip them over. The wind was knocked out of her as she fell down to the ground and Peter rolled on top of her, poising himself on his knees with his hands on either side of her head and a leg between hers.

"You just shouldn't have let your guard down." He said while smirking down at her.

She let out an exasperated breath. " _Fine_. Next time I'll aim to knock you out instead."

Peter laughed at her but didn't move from his position. "You know that in a real fight it's not that easy, right?"

She shot him a pointed look. "In a real fight I would have kicked you straight in the crotch by now."

Peter tilted his head to the side in slight confusion and she looked down, motioning between them. There was enough space between their bodies that she could probably take her leg that was between his and shoot it straight up into a _very_ painful blow, and realization dawned on Peter as she lightly wiggled her leg to illustrate the point. He looked back at her with narrowed eyes as if saying _'don't you dare'_ , and a devilish grin slowly appeared on her face.

The second he saw her making a move, Peter – probably fearing for his man parts – reacted quickly, putting his other leg between hers and trapping her body down with his hips, effectively protecting his sensitive parts. Lena giggled at his panicked expression – she never had any intention of kneeing him in the groin for real, but riling him up was _fun_.

Peter narrowed his eyes at her again. "Funny."

Lena let her giggling dwindle before nodding. "You should have seen your face."

"Don't _ever_ joke about a man's manhood."

Giggling again, Lena let her body settle down on the floor, enjoying the coolness of it against her heated skin. The cold metal beneath her contrasted with the heat coming from Peter above, and for the second time in this sparring session she found herself… _distracted_. Not to mention that all this talk about his man parts made her acutely aware of how and where their bodies were pressed together, and Lena instantly stilled on the ground.

Looking up at him, Lena tried finding something to say to disperse the weird atmosphere surrounding the two but no words came to her. A drop of sweat slowly sliding down Peter's neck drew her attention, her eyes closely following its trail down his skin until it disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.

Lena looked away quickly, unconsciously squirming on the spot but stopping as it only served to draw attention back to the heat and pressure down _there_.

_This is a terrible time to be having these kinds of thoughts,_ she thought. Peter lightly shifted above her and Lena knew she had to do something before she'd do something she'd regret.

Clearing her throat, Lena raised her eyes back to Peter's face only to find him snapping his gaze back up at her guiltily.

She doesn't even want to know _where_ he was looking.

Suddenly, Peter scrambled up to his feet and she was left cold on the hard metal floor. Blinking in a daze at the sudden movement, Lena slowly got herself back up as well while Peter fidgeted with his shirt.

"Ok, so, training's over!" He spoke up in an overly cheery voice. "I am going to take a shower now. Because, you know. All sweaty. And stuff." He finished and practically bolted out of cargo area, leaving Lena alone in the empty space.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, Lena came to the realization that _hot damn,_ she needed to get laid soon. This whole ordeal must have been her projecting her frustrations onto the nearest hot male human being who just happened to be her partner-slash-friend, and she's certainly not going to have sex with _him_ of all people – no matter what her body said. Some boundaries shouldn't be crossed.

 (Try as she might, though, she just could not keep her mind from wandering over to that particular scene, and – although she would never in a million years admit it out loud – in some nights, there were dreams that picked up from where real life left off that she seemed to enjoy just a bit too much.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, yes. The 'sexual tension filled training session' trope. How could I not? I'm actually a sucker for this kind of thing so don't be surprised if something like this pops up again. And did I mention this story is a slow burn? A slooooooow burn. Thank you for everyone who's sticking with it though!


	19. Interlude: A Test of Self-Control

Peter doesn't know how to be friends with women. Or at least, women he's slept with. Which was why no matter how much he might find Lena attractive and how his brain would occasionally betray him with dirty thoughts, he refused to cross that line with her.

Generally-speaking he got pretty good at ignoring those kinds of thoughts. It helped that they'd had a pretty unusual start, and by the time her attractiveness started registering in his mind he'd found himself enjoying her company a lot more.

That didn't mean, however, that it wouldn't occasionally hit him like a sack of bricks.

"You coming or not?" Lena called out, throwing a look over her shoulder.

Peter snapped himself out of it – he swore he hadn't meant to stare.

They were in-between jobs, waiting for Yondu to call them with any new instructions. The planet they had stopped on to refuel was of the decent variety this time, so decent that it didn't even have a sleazy bar for them to visit. This meant that they had to find other ways to occupy their time – which was how they found themselves visiting one of its many glowing blue bodies of water.

Water meant swimming, and swimming meant swimsuits. Swimsuits meant Peter was left in a daze once Lena removed her clothing to reveal a two piece swimsuit and a whole lotta skin and _hot damn_.

"Yeah – coming!" Peter called back, hurriedly removing his shirt and was left only in his trunks.

Lena was standing at the edge of the lake when he approached her. She cocked her head to the side. "Are you sure it's not radioactive?" She spoke, warily eyeing the glowing water.

"Pretty sure." Peter said, keeping his eyes on the lake. Shaking his head free of any impure thoughts, he grinned. "Let's find out." And he jumped in.

\---

Another time in particular was during that _disastrous_ training session. Well, the training itself went fine, it was the end of it that left Peter unable to look at Lena straight in the eye for the rest of the day.

He blamed it on the adrenaline coursing through his body, combined with the position they'd been in (if only she hadn't threatened his manhood they wouldn't have ended up like _that_ ), that his mind wandered just a bit too far into dangerous territory. Her heaving chest was the first distraction, then his eyes slid up the curve of her neck, over her jaw, only to fall on her lips and goddamn if Peter had any less self-control he would have leaned down right then and there and probably ruined their friendship forever.

Her clearing her throat helped snap him back to his right mind, and the first thing he did was scramble up to his feet while trying to hide the evidence that he'd gotten a _little_ more turned on than he should have.

Would it have been that bad, though? If he'd gone through with it, if _they_ had gone through with it, surely it would have been more than great, right?

But what about afterwards?

There would be no leaving the following morning, no skipping breakfast, no 'until next time!' and never to call her again. They _lived_ together – that alone made it impossible for Peter to use any of his usual tactics with her. And quite frankly, treating her like one of his one night stands was the furthest thing from his mind.

That was when, after a very cold shower and an awkward encounter with Lena in the common area, that Peter decided that it was not worth it. Sex wasn't worth ruining things with the only friend he's had in, well, a really long time.

\---

That wasn't the end of it, though – while Peter thought his resolve was made of steel, in reality it was something akin to rubber.

It did get easier the more time they spent together, so at least there's that. Seeing Lena in a swimsuit no longer caught him off guard, and sparring (once they started doing it again) no longer resulted in dirty thoughts and awkward boners like a hormonal teenager with a pretty girl for the first time (although he was always conscious not to end up in any compromising positions – he didn't feel like testing his limits).

A particularly hard blow to his resolve, though, was during that one job.

They were supposed to sneak into an art gallery and steal an item, and to do so the best opportunity was to do it during a formal gala held in the gallery. The people who hired them had provided with an invitation that allowed for a plus one, and Yondu had specifically assigned Peter and Lena because they were pretty much the only ones that could pass off as somewhat civilized people among the Ravagers.

"Come on, the gala's already started!" Peter called through the bathroom door, urging Lena to finish up getting ready.

"It's always good to be fashionably late!" She called back and Peter huffed as he stepped away from the door.

Peter was in the process of putting on the jacket of his black suit when the bathroom door opened and Lena stepped outside.

"Alright, I'm ready." Lena said and Peter blinked at her.

In his defense, Peter's used to Lena wearing pants. Sometimes shorts when going to bed. He's used to her hair being either up in a messy ponytail or in loose curls around her face, a face that also goes makeup free more often than not. He's definitely _not_ used to seeing her in a dress – first time now that he thought about it – especially not a tight red one that looks—Very flattering. Coupled with her hair up in a fancy do and the makeup—

"Peter?" Lena spoke, and Peter didn't even realize he'd been staring.

He shook his head to clear his head, finishing putting on his jacket. "Oh, uh, you look… nice."

Lena shot him a funny look. "…Thanks?"

"Yep." He said, popping the 'p' while trying to act nonchalant.

After a moment, Lena spoke again. "Well, you do clean up pretty well yourself."

Sliding the tie underneath his collar, Peter's mouth lifted up in a crooked grin. "I know."

Lena rolled her eyes, sitting down on a seat to put on her shoes. Peter turned away, gratefully diverting his attention to tying his tie – or at least trying to. He had never tied this kind of tie before, and the more he tried the more tangled up it became.

"What exactly are you trying to do there?" Lena asked after she'd finished with her shoes, staring at him with an amused expression.

"Uh—I'm doing my tie."

She nodded. "Yes. Very poorly."

Unable to resist, Peter narrowed his eyes in a challenging stare. "Think you can do better?"

Lena didn't answer, but the minute she lifted herself up from her seat he knew she'd taken the bait. Walking with confident steps, Lena strutted towards him and she stopped right in front, slapping his hands away from his tie. On hindsight, though, maybe this wasn't such a good idea. As Lena busied herself with the tie, Peter was left awkwardly standing there without knowing what to do with their close proximity.

Lena was naturally considerably shorter than he was, with him being easily able to look over the top of her head when they stand next to each other. But now that she was wearing tall heels it was like a sudden burst in height happened, and suddenly she seemed to be a _lot_ closer than she usually did.

Peter swallowed lightly as the scent of her perfume – _she's wearing goddamn perfume now_ – wafted up his nose. He tried his best to keep a straight face, focusing on the furrowing her brows in concentration instead, and he slowly began to realize that Lena also had no idea what she was doing.

"What exactly are you trying to do there?" Peter said, mimicking her earlier words.

Lena shot him a glare before resuming her attempt at tying his tie, but threw her hands up in frustration shortly after. "Alright, I give up. I have no idea how to do this." She said, putting her hands on her hips. "Let's just google it."

Peter paid no mind to her Earth reference (she'd explained to him what Google was before, and kept using it as a synonym for datanet search despite there being no Google out in space), and was grateful when she stepped away, giving him space to breath.

Tonight was going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aah, writing sexual tension is fun. And here we have Peter's point of view on it!
> 
> I actually already have a lot more written after this but I'm stuck trying to figure out what comes first, haha. I want to balance fluff and bonding time with more plot and action centered chapters (with possibly another two parter coming in the future), and I also want to get to the events of the movie soon. Also romance! We'll get there eventually.
> 
> So thank you everyone who's sticking with the story! Hopefully next chapter will come soon, and probably longer (there's one in particular that turned out to be like a 4k word chapter full of banter and fluff alone, so look forward to that!)


	20. Like a Third Wheel

A shrill ringing cut through the air and woke her up from her slumber. As Lena slowly came to, she started to realize it wasn't much of a ring as much of a beeping sound, and she suddenly recognized it as her communicator-slash-space phone.

Opening her eyes, Lena's mind barely registered the unfamiliar room as she turned on her side, trying to locate the device. Judging from the slightly muffled sound - _why did it sound so loud earlier, God –_ it was coming from inside her jacket that was tossed haphazardly on the floor. Stretching her arm in an attempt to reach it without getting out of bed, Lena briefly took notice of movement coming from behind her.

She eventually managed to grab her jacket, finding the communicator inside a pocket, but not before it stopped beeping. Bringing it close to her face, Lena squinted at the missed call and the one new message notification that popped up on the screen.

_'where are you? we have things to do'_ was the message from Peter, and for Peter to be calling her out on her lateness—oh boy, she'd overslept.

Sitting up, holding the sheet to her bare chest, Lena sent a message back to Peter telling him that she'd be there soon.

"What is it?" A groggy voice came from next to her in bed, and Lena finally turned to face him.

His name was Jay (or nickname apparently, and she couldn't actually remember his full name) and he was a tall, dark-haired Xandarian man with icy blue eyes and a handsome face. They'd met at a bar some time ago and taken a liking to each other – enough that they ended up in bed more than a couple of times over the course of the past few of months. He was nice, funny, easy on the eyes and not a total sleazebag (he was captain of an independent salvage crew – of the legal kind, not the… Ravager one), so Lena had no problem hitting him up every time she was around these parts and, well, horny.

It was a nice arrangement they had, and it saved Lena a lot of trouble from trying to find decent bed partners that were also anatomically compatible.

"Nothing." She said. "It's my—partner. I gotta go."

Jay frowned, sitting up as well. "Already?"

Dragging the sheet with her, Lena got up from the bed to look for her clothes. "Yeah. Stuff… to do."

"You know…" Jay started as Lena busied herself with putting on her underwear. "You could always stay a little longer. You don't have to rush out of here every time."

Lena paused halfway through pulling on her pants.

She wasn't sure how to respond to his offer. This had always been their deal – the no strings attached sex, where she would leave quietly afterwards back to the Milano – but now he was suggesting… something more?

Finishing pulling up her pants, Lena reached for her shirt. "Sorry." She said. "I really have to go."

\---

When Lena walked back into the Milano she was expecting to find Peter. She was _not_ expecting to find Peter casually greeting her as though he didn't have what looked like three large bleeding gashes on his back.

"What the hell happened?!" She asked – or more like demanded.

"What?" Peter spoke, looking as confused as he shouldn't be.

Lena turned him around, staring at the blood staining the back of his shirt. "That!"

"Oh. That. It's nothing, don't worry about it."

"'Don't worry about it'? You know that you're bleeding, right?" She said and Peter frowned, trying to take a peek at his back. "I thought you were off getting laid, not—" She motioned to his wound. "—getting that!"

"I _did_ get laid, than you very much."

"With who, Wolverine?"

Peter shook his head, turning his back away from her. "It's just—let's just say that she wasn't too happy with me leaving this morning."

Lena heaved an exasperated sigh. " _Of course_."

"So like I said, don't worry about it."

"You know that has to be treated, right?"

"It's fine."

Lena shot him a dead stare that lasted a long moment before speaking. "Take your shirt off."

"It's _fine_ —"

"Take your shirt off." She spoke in a tone that said _don't argue with me_.

With a sigh, Peter moved to remove his shirt, wincing slightly at the sting that shot through the wound. Once shirtless, Lena turned him back around to take a closer look at his back and let out another exasperated breath at the sight of a piece of gauze messily taped over the cuts.

"You know that it's not just battle wounds that need actual medical attention, right?" Lena said as she peeled the gauze away. "It's no wonder all your scars are from women."

Peter crossed his arms over his chest, trying not to flinch at Lena's ministrations. "It's really not that bad."

"It's really not that bad if you want to have three brand new scars on your back."

Peter grinned. "Well, chicks dig scars."

Lena rolled her eyes. "Not if you tell them the stories behind them, no."

Peter was about to retort when another sting shot through his back making him flinch away. "You could be a little nicer about it, y'know." He finally said.

"You could also be nicer to the women you sleep with." Lena stated, walking to the medical cabinet. "Maybe that way you don't end up getting stabbed in the morning."

"Oh, this wasn't stabbing. These were her nails."

Lena paused with the medical kit in hand. "Maybe you should also find nicer women." She said and resumed her walk.

Peter huffed a breath, crossing his arms over his chest. "Alright then, you're fired."

Lena paused again, halfway through opening the medical kit. "What?"

"You said I had to find nicer women. You're by far the _worst_." He said with a grin.

Lena shot him a mock-offended look before taking out a piece of gauze and roughly pressing against his wound.

Peter flinched away with a yelp. "See?!"

"You can't fire me, you're not my boss." She said, this time properly cleaning his wound.

"I pay you."

"You don't pay me, we share the profit!"

"What's the difference?"

"There's all the difference!"

"Then I'm kicking you out then."

"Good luck finding a new hacker who's willing to put up with the Awesome Mix being played on repeat. Every. Single. Day."

"You love the Awesome Mix."

"…I have… grown used to it by now. After being played for the millionth time."

This time it was Peter rolling his eyes. He then proceeded to belt out the lyrics to Moonage Daydream, kicking up a notch every time he felt a sting from his wound. Lena tried to look annoyed, but deep down she knew it wasn't just the Awesome Mix she had… grown used to.

\---

The bar was overcrowded that night. Jay would have much preferred to just stay back in his ship and have a good night's rest, but his crew had pestered him enough that he eventually agreed to going out for a few drinks with them.

Letting out a small sigh, Jay gulped down another shot as he looked over the other patrons of the bar with disinterest.

"Whatsa matter, cap'n?" One of his crew, Rohoel, slurred next to him. "Girl troubles?"

Jay thought about denying it, but his crew knew him all too well. Every time he had an encounter with Lena he was left feeling… distraught afterwards.

At first they had started this arrangement as just as a casual fling, with neither of them having any expectations of it turning into anything else. It worked out well enough, as Lena's job – whatever it was, she'd never given him many details – more often than not took her far and wide away from his usual routes.

Something did change though. He began… craving more of her company. He started looking forward to the next time she'd call him to say that she was close by and he tried making the most of the time he had with her. Lena was incredibly interesting to be around, and not just for sex – she was beautiful, smart and funny, and the fact that she was from Terra of all places thoroughly fascinated him. If her stories were anything to go by, her journey from leaving her home planet until now had been very eventful, and he loved hearing her talk about it.

So, despite his head warning him otherwise, he'd started falling for her. And unfortunately for him, she didn't seem to feel quite the same.

Or did she? Honestly, he couldn't tell sometimes – Lena may not have been a cold person, but she kept her feelings hidden very well inside, and he often had trouble telling what she was really thinking despite being very good at it with other people.

Thus, he resigned himself to spending stolen nights together as he worked up the courage to actually _ask her out on a date._

Jay gulped down another shot as Rohoel clapped him on the back. "'S alright, cap'n, we'll get you a girlfriend one of these days."

Jay didn't say anything as a movement in the crowd caught his attention. It seemed a fight was starting to break out.

The captain watched with mild interest as a big burly man yelled a series of expletives at another patron, this one being only slightly smaller but seemingly outnumbered in the impending fight. He almost felt bad for him, but the sight of the Ravager jacket made him wrinkle his nose in distaste. Ravagers were always looking for trouble as Jay had found out long ago, his crew having crossed paths with them before to usually not so friendly results. So if a Ravager was picking fights with random strangers on a bar, well, that was his problem.

Jay was about to take another shot as a familiar brown head of hair in the middle of the crowd caught his attention, and suddenly he was running forward and into the fray.

The first thing he did was throw a punch at the guy coming for Lena, successfully knocking him out as the guy never saw him coming. He shot Lena a glance – briefly wondering what she was doing here as she had told him that she would be leaving this afternoon – and she looked back at him in surprise. Movement caught his attention and from the corner of his eye Jay saw some of his crew coming to back him up in the fight.

It didn't take long for them to take care of the pissed off thugs with the help of his crew, and thanks to his good reputation he was able to remain in the bar while their opponents (those who were still up, anyway) were shooed out by the owner. Once the commotion died down the first thing he did was look for Lena again, but she was nowhere in sight. He frowned in confusion at where she might have gone, and Jay started looking for her hoping that she'd come out okay from the fight.

He eventually found her in a secluded booth in the corner, and she wasn't alone. The same Ravager from before was with her as they sat next to each other – _a little too close_ , a voice in his head said – and Jay stopped in his tracks at the sight.

The Ravager had apparently sustained an injury during the fight, a bloody gash to his temple that Lena was taking care of. One of her hands had taken a hold of his chin as she kept his head slightly turned to the side, while the other hand carefully dabbed at the wound with a napkin. They were talking, although Jay couldn't make out what they were saying, and he wondered how in the world did Lena end up taking care of the injured Ravager in the first place?

Jay's first impulse was to step in and alert her of the Ravagers' reputation lest she get involved with the wrong crowd – and maybe, just maybe, a small sting of jealousy prompted him forwards as well. There was a strange atmosphere between the two that Jay couldn't quite pinpoint what it was, maybe something to do with how Lena would occasionally let out small laughs at something the Ravager said, or how he would grin down at her and she would promptly grin back, or how his hand was casually resting on her tight and she just didn't seem to notice.

Walking with firm steps, Jay went to stand in front of their booth. "Hey." He said, drawing the attention from the Ravager and the Terran girl.

Lena seemed bewildered in seeing him, and the almost unwelcoming look on her face hurt him just a tad bit.

"Jay, hey." She said, shooting nervous glances between him and the Ravager. "What are you doing here?"

Jay wanted to retort that he just saved her from a bar fight but he held his tongue. He looked over at the Ravager to see his reaction, briefly wondering if the reason Lena was so nervous was because of him, but strangely enough the blonde man only seemed mildly curious about the whole thing.

"Just wanted to make sure you were okay." Jay said. "After the fight back there."

"Oh. Oh! I'm fine." She said dismissively.

Lena looked at him as if she expected him to leave, but Jay held his ground. He shot a meaningful glance at the Ravager next to her – who seemed to be just as lost as he was – silently asking for an explanation as he mentally berated himself if he seemed too much like a jealous boyfriend at that moment.

Lena finally got the hint. "Oh, uh—This is Peter." She said, motioning to the Ravager. "He's my… partner. You know, the one I told you about."

Jay's eyebrows shot up. _That_ was her partner? A Ravager? What kind of job did she do?

Turning to the Ravager – Peter? – she spoke. "And this is Jay." She said.

Jay expectantly waited to see what she would introduce him as, if maybe she thought—

"He's…" She trailed off instead, brows furrowing as she searched for a word. Suddenly she leaned closer to the Ravager – a little closer than what was necessary, or was that just his senseless jealousy talking? – and started speaking in hushed tones that Jay couldn't hear over the ambient noise. The Ravager's head shot up then, a look of realization washing over his face.

"Nice to meet you." He – Peter – said, shooting him a grin that was more of a smirk instead. "Thanks for the help back there."

"Yeah." Jay said, and the three of them lapsed into an awkward silence.

Lena looked visibly uncomfortable by the situation, while the Ravager just looked the slightest bit amused. A thousand scenarios went over Jay's head as to the nature of their relationship that ranged from bad to worse – if the Ravager was the one making her uncomfortable, if their partnership wasn't as willing as he'd been led to believe, if he could do anything to help her get out of this situation…

"So, how about a drink?" The Ravager said, breaking the silence.

Lena seemed relieved. "Yes, please."

\---

"So you're both from Terra?" Jay spoke after listening to Peter's tale of how they ended up working together. He'd already heard a version of it from Lena, but this one provided a few more details of what happened – for instance, her current partner was the one who'd saved her from the slave traders in the first place, not to mention that he was a _Ravager_ of all things. The fact that they were both from the same planet might explain a lot too – Jay had never met a Terran before Lena, or even _heard_ of Terra before, so the fact that she was sticking with the only person around from the same planet as hers wasn't much of a stretch to think about, even if said person _was_ a Ravager.

"Yup." Lena spoke, bringing her drink up to her lips and finishing up in one gulp. She slammed the empty glass down on the table, and Peter was about to motion a waitress for another round when Lena slapped his hand down. "What are you doing?"

"Getting more drinks."

"Nuh-uh, you've had enough."

Peter's shoulders slumped. " _Come oon_."

"Something tells me it'd be a bad idea to get smashed when you possibly have a concussion!" Lena said, and the authoritative tone in her voice made Jay reel for a second.

That was not the kind of tone he'd expected her to talk to a Ravager with.

" _Lenaaa_." Peter whined, and Jay figured he'd already had a little too much to drink to begin with. "I do _not_ have a concussion."

" _You_ do not know that." She retorted. "Maybe you shouldn't go picking fights with strangers next time!" Lena picked up a napkin off the table and bunched it up in a ball, feebly throwing it at Peter's face. She'd probably also had too much to drink.

The paper ball bounced harmlessly off his forehead as Peter wrinkled his nose. "I didn't start it, he did." He defended himself.

Lena snorted. "That's what you always say."

When Lena had told Jay she travelled around with a partner doing odd jobs here and there, he hadn't expected said partner to be… _that_. Ravager aside, Jay hadn't expected him to be, well, a guy.

Oh, he'd been perfectly aware that her partner was male, she'd told him plenty of times. It just had never really hit him until he saw the guy in person – the fact that Lena was living, alone, with an actually _good looking_ man, one she seemed entirely more comfortable with than Jay had ever expected her to be, and, if he were honest with himself, far more comfortable with _him_ than she ever was with Jay himself.

He thought that he and Lena shared some kind of connection – things they could talk and laugh about (even if the better part of their encounters involved sex), but she and Peter was something else altogether. They seemed to have their own inside jokes, an easy rhythm of their own that could only have been developed over the course of continuous interaction with each other. More than once during their conversation Jay also found himself lost at what he assumed to be Terran references – he wasn't sure what a female Wolverine was, or what was this 'Dirty Dancing' move that Peter was so adamant he could do it while Lena openly denied it – and he became painfully aware of how he'd overestimated his and Lena's… bond.

Jay also never knew Lena could be so bossy. Sure, he knew she had spunk, that she was quick-witted with a sharp tongue, but she'd never been straight up bossy with him. And what he first thought of as a good thing, he began realizing that said bossiness was actually her _taking care_ of Peter, and immediately felt dejected at the fact that Peter also had _that_ over him.

And since when had that become a competition? It wasn't like Peter showed any interest in her the same way Jay did, and Lena had already explained to him more than once that she and her partner had a strictly platonic relationship.

So why did he feel weird when Lena turned down his invitation to spend the night together again in favor of getting back to her ship with Peter? 'Have to make sure he doesn't have a concussion', she'd said, and Peter had simply rolled his eyes commenting how she worries too much. Jay watched wistfully as the two left the bar, Peter slinging an arm over her shoulders and Lena not even blinking twice at the action.

\---

The cold air from outside was a welcome change from the crowded atmosphere of the bar. Lena had been feeling far too stifled in there, and in no small part thanks to the fact that she had ran into Jay when she had been least expecting it. After the whole ordeal from this morning – him making an attempt at turning their booty calls into something more that she just wasn't ready for – she hadn't been looking forward to seeing him again so soon. Actually she had hoped to leave the planet then, but they'd been forced to stay for another day thanks to a hold up with one of their contacts.

"Soo, your boyfriend seemed nice." Peter spoke up once they were outside. The cold air began giving her a chill, and she had half a mind to be grateful for Peter's body heat against her as he kept an arm around her shoulders.

Lena sighed. "He's not my boyfriend."

"He seemed to think like it."

Lena frowned, faltering a step. "What? No, he didn't." She said quickly. "We have a thing, but it's not a… thing. We just slept together a couple of times."

Peter looked down at her, raising an eyebrow.

Looking up at him, Lena raised an eyebrow back. "I know sleeping together more than once would probably constitute a 'relationship' for you, but it's surprisingly hard finding decent partners out here in space so I need to hold on to the ones I find." She said. After a pause, she slung an arm around his back and added "And unlike you, I'm not into A'askavariians."

"…That was _one_ time…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as I love tropes and cliches, the 'getting stupidly jealous over their significant other' is one I'm not very fond of. I don't know, I just don't find jealousy sexy oop
> 
> But I do like making other people jealous of our main pair! So, sorry Jay, you may be getting the booty but you'll never get the heart. Or will he??? Stay tuned to find out!
> 
> This chapter also turned out quite long, but it's not the nearly 4k one I promised before hehe. I did like writing from an outsider's perspective and I might do it again (somewhere… in the future… possibly), but I want to keep developing their relationship as well. Also I can't believe we've reached 20 chapters holy crap! Thank you so much everyone who's been accompanying me with this story!


	21. Drinking the Night Away

"Do you want the bad news or the good news?" Peter asked.

Lena raised her eyes from her data pad when Peter approached, brows immediately twisting into a frown at the prospect of bad news.

She sighed. "What's the bad news?"

Dropping his hands from his waist, Peter dodged a passerby as he went to sit next to Lena at the fountain. "Bad news – our contact had a delay. He won't be here for another day, maybe two."

Lena exhaled in exasperation. That just threw a wrench in her plans of meeting another client after they were done with this – she'd have to reschedule.

"Other bad news, you know that funky smell we've been noticing in the Milano? Turns out that was a burst pipe and there was a leak near the engine." Peter continued. "I had to put the Milano up for repairs. Shouldn't be long, though, but definitely more than a day."

"Ain't that just great." Lena grumbled. So they were stuck here with no place to spend the night. Great. The suns were already setting on the horizon, so they'd need to find a hotel or something quick.

"Other _other_ bad news…"

"There's more?!"

"Things here are a little on the expensive side, and because I had to pay an actual repair shop to fix the Milano… well, we're short on cash."

Throwing her hands up in the air, Lena shook her head. "So, what now? Where are we going to _sleep?_ "

"That's where the good news come in." Peter grinned, sticking his hand inside his pocket. He pulled out a small object wrapped in fabric and held it out to Lena who was looking at him in confusion.

Unwrapping the fabric revealed it to be a pair of what looked like bracelets, made from a shiny dark blue metal and covered in small inscriptions. Lena only stared at him while she waited for him to elaborate.

"These are Ixirian wedding bands." He explained.

Lena simply continued to give him a dead stare. "…Are you asking me to marry you?"

"Yes."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Well, not really." He said. Taking one of the bracelets into his hand, he put it on his left arm. "But I need you to wear it."

Peter pushed the bracelet onto her and Lena had no choice but to take it. She still didn't put it on, though. "Why?" She asked, suspicious.

"Because I have a plan."

_That_ didn't sound like a recipe for disaster at all. Lena's eyebrow remained raised.

Relenting, Peter shook his head as pocketed back the fabric that had covered the bracelets. "Did you know Ixirians take a couple's wedding night very seriously? Well, I say night but it's more like a full day. It's borderline sacred to them."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, I have a plan to get us free accommodations!" Peter said and jumped up to his feet, pulling Lena along before she had a chance to react.

\---

"You got it on, right?" Peter asked, checking for the tenth time if Lena had put on the bracelet on the right place.

"Yeah, yeah." She replied. "I can't believe you spent the rest of our money on these things because you _think_ you can score us a free room."

"I _know_ I can score us a free room."

"We wouldn't _need_ a free room if you hadn't spent our money on trying to _get_ a free room!"

"Shhh!" Peter shushed her, looking around to see if anyone had heard them. They were right in front of the hotel now, it wouldn't do good to blow their cover. Resuming on a hushed tone, Peter spoke. "This way we can spend the night on a top star hotel, instead of the dingy hole we would've been able to afford."

Lena was quiet for a moment. "If this doesn't work, I'm making you beg for money out in the streets."

"It will." Peter said with such conviction that it nearly convinced Lena as well. "Let's go."

Pulling Lena along to the entrance of the hotel, Peter wrapped an arm around her waist as they walked towards the reception desk. Lena didn't say anything at the gesture, fighting the urge the raise an eyebrow again.

"Hello, how can I help you?" The clerk greeted in a friendly tone and Peter smiled back at him.

"Yes, hello! You see, my wife and I—" Peter threw Lena a look and she plastered a smile on her face. "We just got married. Like, newly married." He raised his hand showing the wedding bracelet to the clerk. "And we've been looking for a place to stay for our wedding night…"

The clerk's face lit up and Lena's smile faltered for a second, not expecting this reaction. "Is that so? That's fantastic! And you came to us?"

"Only the best of the best for such a special occasion!" Peter pipped up, widening his smile.

"Please wait a moment." The clerk called out cheerfully before turning to a computer screen next to him. A couple of minutes later he turned back. "We would be honored to have you in our care during this special night."

"Great! So that'll be…"

"Free of charge, of course."

Lena had to fight the surprise from showing on her face. _It actually… worked?_

"I just need your names, Mr. and Mrs...?"

Peter blinked. Even he couldn't believe it had actually worked. "Uh—My name is… Clyde. And this is my wife, Bonnie. Bonnie and Clyde." He paused. "Skywalker."

This time Lena couldn't stop an eyebrow from raising. Thankfully, the clerk didn't seem to notice. "Of course, Mr. Skywalker. We'll have your room ready in no time."

\---

"I can't believe that really worked." Was the first thing Lena said once they were alone in their big and fancy hotel room.

"And you doubted me, ha."

"Yes. Yes, I did. And still do." Throwing her bag on a nearby table, Lena turned to Peter with her hands on her hips. "And Bonnie and Clyde? _Seriously_?"

"What? It's not like anyone knows who they are. And it seemed fitting, for us – aside from the whole married thing."

Lena rolled her eyes. "They weren't married."

Peter stopped in his tracks, looking at her with wide eyes. "They weren't?"

"No."

"But they were—together, right? Like _together_ together."

"That they were."

Peter nearly breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, okay then." He resumed his walk to the bed. "We're like Bonnie and Clyde, aside from the whole being together thing."

Lena rolled her eyes again as Peter threw himself face down onto the bed, but then decided to just enjoy the moment and took off her jacket to make herself more comfortable. She took a moment to appraise the room, admiring the dark blue decor, the fancy furniture, and just its _size_ – she didn't think she'd ever slept in such a luxurious hotel as this one.

Her eyes were drawn to the bathroom door, and her mood suddenly perked up at the prospect of taking a nice and relaxing bath. If they had baths in this planet. Either way, now that they were already here, she might as well make the most of it, right?

\---

By the time she came out of the bathroom wearing her sleeping clothes, Peter had discarded his jacket, pants and boots and was lounging on the bed on his shirt and boxers, a glass of amber liquid in his hand.

"Is that alcohol?" Lena asked as she stepped closer. The warm bath had done wonders to her body, and now she was left feeling very relaxed and just a tiny bit lethargic.

"Yep." He lifted his glass. "On the house. For the newlyweds, you know."

"Huh."

Lena moved away to put her used clothes in her bag, deciding that those needed to be washed soon judging by the smell. Either that, or the soap she'd just used was so good that made her clothes smell like trash in comparison. Storing those thoughts away for later, the only thing that mattered then was the expectation of sleeping in an actual, comfy bed for once. She turned back towards it, stopping halfway in her tracks once she realized a very important detail.

"There's only one bed."

Peter blinked, as if just realizing this as well. He turned back to her with a lost expression. "…I guess that's to be expected of a married couple."

Lena sighed in annoyance. "You really didn't think this through, did you?"

"Hey, I got us a room, didn't I? We just need to figure out who takes the bed."

Lena stared him down for a moment before stating in a definite tone, "I'm not sleeping on the floor."

"Well, I'm not sleeping on the floor either." Peter rebutted.

Lena shook her head, staring at Peter in silence for another moment. "Then I guess we'll have to share."

Throwing herself down onto the bed, Lena crawled over until she could flop her head down onto a pillow and moaned softly at the velvety feel of the fabric. "It's so soft…" She muttered, words coming out muffled by the pillow.

"And who do you have to thank for that?" Peter spoke and Lena opened an eye to shoot him a dead stare.

Lena pulled herself up so she could sit with her back against the headboard, motioning for Peter to pour her a drink. "Yes, thank you for conning a hotel room for us."

Handing her a glass, Peter grinned. "You're welcome. Only the best of the best for my partner in crime."

Lena snorted in disbelief as she took a sip of her drink, letting the pleasant burn of the liquid wash down her throat before speaking. "I can't believe we're taking advantage of a culture and their trust in people like this. We're _terrible_ people."

"Are you saying I should feel bad for leading you down the dark path?"

Lena sighed and took another sip. "Nah, you were hardly my first step into a life of crime."

Peter raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really? Then what was it?"

"You know how I told you I got kicked out of college?"

"Yeah. Why _did_ you get kicked out of college?"

-

"So you see, after I left my foster's – well, adoptive by then – parents' house and moved to college, I was trying to live out on my own without depending on anybody." Lena said and took a sip of her drink. "And I needed money for that. So I started taking some odd jobs here and there fixing computers for people, when word of my… _skills_ started getting around. Then one day I was approached by this guy, his name was Tyler, and he was another student and also really, really rich – but also really, really bad at everything that had to do with academics. So he comes to me and asks me to hack into the college's system and change his grades for the better otherwise his dad would stop paying for his tuition, and honestly I should have said no but then he offered me a _shitload_ of money and I just couldn't refuse. So I did it."

"And you got caught?" Peter asked.

"Pfft, no. _He_ got caught. Obviously people noticed how his grades had suddenly skyrocketed and they went after him. And the bastard snitched on me to save his own skin."

"Sounds like an ass."

"He was. Probably still is." She gulped down the rest of her drink.

"Then what happened?"

Sighing, Lena motioned for Peter to pour her some more booze. "I lost my scholarship. Also got kicked out. Tyler didn't because daddy is rich and influential. But hey, at least I kept the money." She shrugged. "By then, _certain_ _people_ had started taking notice of my talents, and I started getting job offers. Some not very legal job offers." Taking back her glass – now full – from Peter, she continued. "So I took them. I had nowhere else to go and it seemed like the only way at the time." Letting out another sigh, Lena drank some more. "Sometimes I wonder, though, what would have happened if I had never gotten kicked out. If I would have had an actual honest job, living out an honest life somewhere."

Peter's face broke into a knowing grin as he lifted the glass to his mouth. "Hate to break it to ya, Len, but you've got the soul of an outlaw."

She raised an amused eyebrow. "Oh, do I?"

"Yep. Takes one to know one."

"Says Star-Lord, the 'Legendary' Outlaw."

"Absolutely."

She rolled her eyes. "You know that people need to _know you_ before you get to Legendary status, right?"

"Only a matter of time."

-

"Why the _Milano_?" Lena asked, feet resting on the headboard as she laid opposite to Peter, propped up on an elbow with a drink in hand.

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you name it like that?"

"Y'know Alyssa Milano?"

"…The actress?"

"Yeah. Man, I had a _huge_ crush on her back then." Peter said with a fond smile.

"You named your ship after a _crush_? On an actress? Of a… tv show?"

"Don't judge me, what would you name _your_ ship?"

"Not Hugh Jackman, that's for sure."

"Huge _what_?"

"Maybe Swayze, though. Has a nice ring to it. Or maybe I can just go ahead and name it the Millennium Falcon."

"So you're just gonna straight up steal it from Star Wars?"

"How about the Death Star?"

Peter thought it over for a second. "Would it be a star, though?"

"Yeah… Death Ship."

"That's terrible."

She made a face. "...Kinda, yeah. Let's just go back to the Millennium Falcon. How about just Falcon?"

"Not bad."

"Or maybe just Millennium?"

Peter waved his hands around. "Millennium, Milano."

Lena fell into a fit of giggles.

-

"She thought I was a Krillar!" Peter exclaimed. "You should have seen her face when I pulled down my pants – you could just tell it was definitely _not_ what she was expecting!"

Lena giggled uncontrollably at the mental image. "Why would you be a Krillar? They're like—yellow!"

"I guess she thought I had a bad case of sunburn or something." Peter said and Lena tossed her head back into the pillow for another fit of giggles. "Why are you laughing at my misery?" He complained, but at the same time he had a grin on his face.

"Because—" Giggles. "I can just picture your face!" Pulling herself up on her elbow, Lena stared down at Peter next to her. "Have you ever seen a woman look so disappointed with your junk before?"

"She was not disappointed! Just… surprised."

Lena fell back down on the bed, her shoulder bumping Peter's. "If that's what you tell yourself at night…" She teased.

"My junk is just fine. More than fine!" He exclaimed defensively, but his grin never wavered.

"I'm sure." She giggled.

Peter turned on his side, misjudging the distance between their bodies due to his drunken state and ended up pressed against Lena's side. His hands went to the waistband of his boxers. "What, you want to take a look for yourself then?"

Lena let out another giggle as she slapped his chest with the back of her hand. "You keep it in your pants, Star-Lord."

Peter flopped back down with a snicker.

A few moments of quiet giggling passed before Lena turned back to Peter. "Sooo, did you do it or not?"

-

"I could totally do that move." Peter stated seriously.

"The lift move?" Lena asked, incredulous.

"Absolutely. I can Dirty Dance it up anytime."

Lena raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "Yeah, I doubt that."

Peter shot her a mock-offended look before jumping out of bed and walking over to the far side of the room. Lena just stared at him in confusion.

Peter pointed at her. "I am about to prove you wrong."

Lena's eyebrows shot up. "You don't mean—"

"Yes, I do. Now come on."

Peter motioned for her to join him and Lena slowly shook her head, slightly fearing for her wellbeing. Peter insisted. Still apprehensive, Lena got up from the bed to stand in front of him but a few steps away.

She eyed him warily. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Have a little faith in me – you're not that heavy."

She shot him an indignant look. "That's not what I meant."

"Just trust me, okay?"

Lena sighed dramatically. It's not that she didn't trust Peter, but she didn't trust him not to drop her while attempting a fairly difficult move _while_ being drunk. Honestly, if she were sober she would have refused straight away.

She wasn't.

"I've never done this before." She spoke after a long moment of deliberation. "What do I do?"

"Uh—" Peter moved a few steps away to create some more distance. "Just run and jump. I'll catch you."

Lena stepped backwards as well. "That's it?"

"Probably."

She threw her hands up. "You're not inspiring much confidence here!"

Peter beckoned her. "Just come on and jump!"

"I swear if you drop me—"

"I won't. Now, come on."

"I'll do it." She spoke in a warning tone.

"Yes! Come on."

"I'll really do it!"

"Just _go_!"

"I'm going!"

Before Peter could open his mouth to retort, Lena was already running straight at him.

Lena let out a squeal as she jumped, hands coming up to grasp at his shoulders for support as Peter took a firm hold of her midriff and lifted her high up in the air. Her legs dangled loosely before she attempted to straighten them out in the correct position, and she found herself surprised at the fact that she didn't tumble down to the ground straight away. Peter let out a triumphant _ha!_ beneath her.

Now imbued with confidence after Peter managed to hold their position with a surprisingly firm hand, Lena decided to risk removing hers from his shoulders.

That was a mistake.

She lost her balance, which in turn made Peter lose _his_ balance. Lena had to throw her weight backwards to avoid falling flat on her face, but that just made her slip from Peter's hands and fall down. Peter's arms came up quickly, however, wrapping themselves around her and cushioning her body to his to stop her fall.

"Oh my God." Lena breathed out, chest heaving from the scare.

"I told you I could do it." Peter said with a satisfied grin. Lena wiggled her feet and the lone thought of _'why aren't they touching the floor?'_ briefly ran through her mind.

"That wasn't doing it, that was a poor man's version of it!" She laughed.

"Yeah, well, whose fault is that?"

She slapped his shoulder. "Yours!"

"I was doing my job, thank you very much." He said, tilting forward as he tried to give her a serious stare.

Lena felt herself slipping back down. "Maybe you should have done a better job, then."

Her feet finally made contact with the ground and Lena could feel Peter's grip on her loosening slightly. But that wasn't the only thing she started to feel – slowly she became aware of how her shirt had ridden up to expose her midriff, a tingling sensation emanating from where Peter was touching her bare skin. His large hand was loosely gripping at her waist while the other rested against her back, arms encircling her and pushing their bodies close against one another to the point that she couldn't tell whether the heartbeat she was feeling was hers or his.

Lena blinked repeatedly, trying to refocus herself. She cleared her throat. "So, uh. You definitely need more practice."

"…Yeah. Yeah. Probably."

Pulling away and ignoring the longing spark that went through her at that moment, Lena took a definite step back. "Right. How about more booze?"

Peter nodded vigorously. "Definitely yes."

\---

A bright ray of sunlight streamed through the curtains, hitting Peter straight in the face. No matter how much he tried to ignore it and cling to the last tendrils of sleep, he was unwillingly dragged back to consciousness.

Peter blinked his eyes open, wincing away from the sunlight with a scowl. His throbbing head only prompted him to close his eyes again, and Peter let out a groan when he realized he had a hangover.

_We should not have had… however much we had to drink last night._

Peter tried to lift his hand intent on rubbing his eyes, but a warm weight draped over his arm stopped him. Blinking rapidly, he looked down in confusion.

Someway and somehow, Lena had ended up falling asleep against him. She was somewhere between on her front and on her side, face pressed against his shoulder and a leg draped over his. Her hand lightly twitched against his chest at his movement and Peter froze, not wanting to wake her but unsure of what to do in this predicament.

So he stared.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been staring exactly. Lena's light breathing distracted him from his hangover, Peter watching as her small puffs of breath blew at the strands of hair that had fallen over her face. She shifted, face burrowing into his shoulder, and a lock of hair ended up trapped between her lips.

Peter's sleep-lidded brain didn't think much before he lifted his opposite hand to pluck the hair away, finger lightly brushing against her cheek as he pulled at the strands.

The movement caused Lena to stir against him and Peter froze with his hand still in the air. After another stirring that signaled her waking up, Peter snapped back into focus and did the first thing that came to mind – he shut his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

Eyes closed, keeping his breathing as even as possible, Peter waited as Lena began moving against him. At first it was just her head, face rubbing against his shoulder as her breaths became irregular. Then it was her leg, knee pushing up between his and suddenly he had to restrain himself from physically reacting. Next it was her head again, the weight on his shoulder abruptly lessening after a moment of stillness. Peter waited, dead still as Lena laid her head back down after a few long seconds and then shifted her head up, as though she was staring at him. He wasn't sure how long it was until Lena finally pushed herself off him, and he found himself suddenly missing the warmth against his side.

Peter felt the bed shift as Lena moved away and figured that was probably his cue to 'wake up'. Blinking his eyes open, he took a deep breath.

"Good morning." He said, voice still hoarse from sleep.

Lena was sitting at the edge of the bed, running a hand over her face with her back to him when he looked over. At the sound of his voice, she turned her head to look at him. "Hey." She spoke.

Peter pushed himself to a sitting position, groaning when the movement made him aware of his headache again.

"So…" Lena started, fully turning her body to him. "We should probably have not drunk the room's entire liquor cabinet last night."

Peter let out a light snort. "Yeah. But hey, it was free."

"Yeah. Free hangover."

Peter could only agree, swinging his legs over the side of the bed as he made a move to get up to the bathroom.

Lena got to her feet before him. "I call dibs on the bathroom!" And she hurried through the door.

Peter let out another groan, throwing himself back on the bed. He tried to make himself stay annoyed at her for stealing the bathroom, but it was pointless as this kind of feeling never lasted long anyway.

Other kinds of feelings, however, Peter would much rather not dwell on at the moment. Or at all. Because that would mean he had them – and he _absolutely_ did _not_ have anything of the sort.

And the worst part is that was beginning to sound fake even to his own ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone say 4k chapter to celebrate Vol. 2 coming out? I did! So here it is!
> 
> Also I just watched it today and it was wow. That's all I'm gonna say. So I had to come here and post this in excitement! I'm not gonna give any spoilers to anyone who hasn't watched it yet (which is probably the vast majority of people haha) so you guys can keep reading the fic without any worries. This chapter for instance was written before the movie came out so it had no influence here.
> 
> Now I don't have any new chapters ready though (it was a busy month), but I don't plan on making any connections to the new movie anytime soon (we haven't even reached the first movie oops). If I do decide to throw in something that was said/shown in the new movie, I'll be sure to put a spoiler warning at the beginning of the chapter for anyone who hasn't watched it yet!
> 
> So, basically, rest easy because there will be no spoilers in this fic! And go watch Vol. 2!
> 
> Anyways, thank you for the kind words and to everyone who's keeping up with this fic. I know it's slow, but we'll get there eventually so your support means a lot to me! Thank you!


	22. The Consequence of Choice Part I

Lena had long gotten used to finding random articles of clothing strewn about the ship – a sweaty shirt over here, dirty socks over there, she even found a pair of pants stuffed inside the kitchen cabinet one time that neither she nor Peter had any idea how it got there. That had long become part of her daily life, much like listening to the same handful of songs over and over on a regular basis. What she did _not_ appreciate, however, was finding Peter's dirty underwear on top of her bunk.

"Seriously?" She said, lifting up the offending garment pinched between the tips of her fingers. "Can you _not_ leave your dirty underwear on my bed?"

Peter shifted his attention from the common area's computer to her and frowned. "…How did it get there?"

"And how am I supposed to know?" Lena spoke, throwing the underwear onto his bunk.

Peter shrugged, turning back to the screen. "I don't know, it's your bed."

"And it's _your_ underwear."

He shrugged again. "Don't act like you've never left your underwear on my bunk either – I found a bra under my pillow last week."

Lena paused, trying to think of a reason why one of her bras would end up in Peter's bed. She found none. "…That wasn't mine."

Peter stopped. "It wasn't? The pink one, with the lace…?"

"Nope."

"Oh."

Lena briefly narrowed her eyes at the almost disappointed tone in his voice, but her train of thought was interrupted by a ringing sound coming from the compartment where she kept her things.

"What's that?" Peter asked.

Moving to open the compartment, she grabbed the source of the noise. "It's my phone." She said, picking it up and bringing it out.

"Who is it?"

"Nobody – it's my Earth phone." She explained. It was her old cellphone, the one she brought from Earth. Although it wasn't much of a phone anymore as it got no reception in space, she still made a point to keep it charged – it was a smartphone, after all, it still had other uses, if only to take pictures and play mobile games when she was bored. She still lamented over the fact that she'd kept her music on a separate MP3 player, though, and somehow had managed to forget to bring it with her on the day she got abducted.

"Then why is it ringing?" Peter asked.

She checked. It was an alarm she had set up to let her know of any important dates as per Earth's calendar – although they used a different system out here in space, she didn't feel like giving up Earth's measurement of time just yet. Or ever. And according to her calendar, today was—

"Oh."

Peter frowned as he turned to her again, computer screen forgotten in front of him as curiosity took over. "What? What is it?"

Lena snapped out of it at the sound of his voice. She silenced the alarm. "It's my birthday." She said quietly.

"What?" Peter exclaimed, surprised. He came to stand next to her, peeking into the phone in her hands. "It's your birthday? No way. What day is it?"

"September 8th."

"Happy birthday, then! How old are you again?"

Lena had to stop and do the math. "Twenty… four? Twenty-four." She confirmed. Sometimes she couldn't believe it had already been over a year ever since she got abducted from Earth, and sometimes it all felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. She had even missed her twenty-third birthday during all the drama and excitement of settling down in space, so this would technically be the first birthday she celebrated out here…

"Well, then we should celebrate!" Peter said. "I know this bar not far from here—"

"No, no, it's fine." Lena said. "We can just stay here."

Truth be told, Lena wasn't very fond of celebrating her birthday. Growing up in foster homes meant she never had fancy birthday parties when she was a child, always envying the kids whose parents would throw them big birthday bashes with bouncy castles and lots of gifts. Then she grew out of the bouncy castles phase and her birthdays only grew to be a bitter reminder that her own parents threw her away anyway.

Eventually she grew out of that phase as well, but her birthdays remained a day that she would rather passed by quietly – it's not like she had many friends to celebrate them with anyway, especially not during her last few years on Earth.

"Nuh-uh, it's your birthday and we're celebrating." Peter insisted.

Lena sighed. "I don't want a big birthday… thing."

"Then we won't have a big birthday thing – it'll be just the two of us, grabbing a drink and singing 'happy birthday to you' once we're drunk enough." Peter said, coming to stand right in front of her. "Come on, Len, what do you say?"

Lena wanted to say no, but the earnest look in Peter's eyes and the excitement in his voice made her resistance melt away. "Okay. Fine. Let's go to this bar of yours."

Peter grinned and Lena had to begrudgingly admit that his excitement was infectious. "Alright!" He exclaimed as he turned away, practically bouncing off towards the cockpit in his enthusiasm and Lena decided that maybe celebrating her birthday for once wouldn't be so bad after all.

\---

As it was a special occasion, Lena decided to make herself look nicer than her usual – or maybe she had just been looking for an excuse to dress up for once. She didn't go the whole nine yards with it, though, just some make up, a nicer shirt, a new jacket, her hair not the usual mess. Just enough to feel different, renewed.

Leaving the bathroom, Lena found Peter putting something inside one of the kitchen cabinets. He jumped when she called his name.

"Oh, hey." Peter said, attempting to sound casual. "You look nice."

She narrowed her eyes at his attempt at diverting her attention with a compliment. "What are you doing?"

"…Nothing."

She tilted her head to the side, eyes still narrowed.

"Nothing!" He said, pushing himself away from the cabinets. "Let's go."

"And where have you been all this time?" She continued probing. After reaching their destination Peter had disappeared from the ship for a while, telling her to get ready and that he'd be back soon but refusing to say where he was going.

"Nowhere." He replied. At her stare, he continued. "Nowhere you need to worry about, I promise. Now, can we go?"

She stared at him for a few more seconds before sighing. "Okay, lead the way."

\---

"So, it's not so bad, is it?" Peter said, twirling his cue stick in his hands.

The bar Peter had taken them to was unlike their usual drinking places. It was a small and cozy establishment that lacked the usual shady quality she was used to seeing and it made for a nice change of pace. It wasn't crowded either, so they were able to easily move from their booth to the game tables at the back and ended up playing a round of a game that was a cross between pool and a pinball machine.

"Not so bad." Lena agreed, unable to contain her grin. It was nice and relaxing and fun – especially with Peter here. "Is it my turn?"

"Yep."

She nodded, moving to the shooting spot at the table. She took her shot and watched as the ball bounced off the walls and several obstacles until it landed on a hole.

The table dinged, announcing the winner, and Lena lifted up the cue stick in celebration. "Aha!"

"What? No way!" Peter spoke, moving in to check the results. "No way you did better than me. You've never played this before!"

Lena grinned. "I'm actually pretty good at pool, you know."

"Yeah, but this isn't _pool_. You know what this is? Beginner's luck."

"You're just a sore loser."

Peter scoffed. "I am not! Let's go again."

Lena set the cue stick down. "Nooo. Or we'll be here all night."

Peter exhaled dramatically, putting away his stick as well. " _Fine_. But I'll have you know that I let you win because it's your birthday."

"You did _not_."

"Beginner's luck."

She laughed. "Stop changing your excuse!"

"Let's dance."

"What?"

"Let's _dance_." He repeated, grabbing her hands and dragging her away from the game table. There was a soft melody playing on the background, she noticed, that wasn't quite Earth music but came pretty close. Lena wanted to say no but _what the hell, it's my birthday,_ so she decided to indulge herself and let him lead her to an open space where other people were already dancing.

He tugged her towards him, but instead of pulling her close like she thought he would, he pushed her away, letting go of one hand and using the other one to twirl her around. Lena laughed as he pulled her closer again, this time resting his free hand on the small of her back as she laid hers on his shoulder.

"Having fun yet?" He said, smiling as he looked down at her.

She bit back a grin. "I'll let you know once the night is over."

He hummed an agreement, falling into silence as he led her in their dance.

They swayed side to side following the slow beat of the music. Lena was thankful that their close proximity didn't turn awkward, although the fact that they were both pretty buzzed might have helped with that. If anything, she felt pretty… content.

Was that the right word? Content? Yeah, it might be – _happy_ just didn't seem to appropriately describe it. She felt content, and not just with the situation at the moment (although dancing with Peter felt really… nice), but with _life_ in general. She honestly can't remember the last time she felt like this, feeling like this was how everything was supposed to go, like everything had fallen into the right place. Sure, it might not have been the most glamourous life, and sure there were still many hardships – but there was nowhere else she would rather be right now. It was a strange, but welcome, feeling.

"What?" Peter spoke, breaking her out of her thoughts.

Lena blinked. "What?" She responded, confused.

"You're smiling like a doofus."

"I am not." She said. She bit the inside of her cheek once she realized she had been, in fact, smiling without knowing.

"Hm-hm." Peter nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. He pushed her away and spun her around again before tugging her back to him. "Happy birthday, by the way."

Her mouth broke out into another smile and she could swear it had a mind of its own. "Thank you." She said. They had another moment of silence as they continued dancing until she spoke up again. "What about you, when's your birthday?"

Peter looked away as if trying to remember it. "Uh… Sometime in February." He said and Lena raised an eyebrow at him. He rolled his eyes. "February 4th." He finally said.

She grinned. "Let's be sure to celebrate then."

Peter was about to retort when something behind her caught his eye. He stepped away, face falling into a frown and Lena turned around to look behind her. She barely had the time to register the sight of a group of pissed off looking men stepping into the bar when the bigger one sneered straight at them and pulled out a pistol.

"Move!" Peter yelled and threw his body onto hers as he dove for cover, pulling her along just as the man began firing. Screams erupted around them as people began running around, trying to get away from the gunfire.

"What the hell?!" She yelled. "Who the hell is that guy?!"

"He's—" The corner of the fallen table they were hiding behind exploded from the gunfire. "Remember that last job—" More pieces of the table went flying. "Remember those bounty hunters I had to trick to get to the artefact? That's their leader!"

"Peter Quill!" She heard one of them yell. "You think you can double cross us and get away with it?!  Prepare to die!"

Lena muttered a curse as she sunk lower to the ground to avoid getting shot. Peter had already pulled out a blaster by the time she started unstrapping her stun gun from her belt, and he motioned for her to get ready.

Peter activated his mask. "Cover your eyes." He said as he pulled out something from his jacket with his free hand. Lena recognized it as a flash bomb, and immediately figured out what his plan was.

The bar was covered in a blinding light after Peter threw the flash bomb at their attackers, Lena having quickly covered her eyes before it went off. She felt Peter move from beside her, his mask allowing him to see over the light as he started firing at the bounty hunters. Lena heard yelling and a crushing noise before the light suddenly dissipated, and she realized one of the men must have destroyed the device.

Peter fell back behind cover next to her. "I took two of them out but there are more coming in." He said, pulling out his second blaster. "I think we're gonna have to make a break for it."

Lena barely had the time to let out a "How—" when Peter suddenly dove out of cover and started running. He really _was_ making a break for it – blasters firing at the same time he avoided getting shot as he made his way to the other side of the bar. Lena quietly let out a curse at his recklessness.

The gunfire continued for a few more moments before it quieted down, and Lena risked a peek from behind the table. She saw that Peter had taken cover behind the counter on the other side of the bar, while the three remaining men had their attentions entirely focused on him. She briefly noted that the place was empty save for the five of them, everyone else having already run out when the gunshots started.

"Are you hiding like a coward now, Quill?" The leader spoke. "Come out and die like a man!"

"Don't feel like it!" She heard Peter yell from behind the counter. "You know what I feel like? _Getting. The. Hell. Out._ "

It took a second for Lena to realize the last words were meant for _her_.

Was that his plan? Draw the fire away from her so she could get out while he was left to deal with those thugs? _On his own_? She wasn't questioning his ability to fight, no – but that was a _stupid_ plan. A stupid and reckless plan that was so _Peter_ she should have seen it coming from a mile away.

"The only way you're getting out of here is in a body bag!" The leader yelled and the other two thugs cheered him on. They were distracted, she realized, and suddenly an idea popped up in her mind.

Honestly, for all the flack she gives Peter about his plans, she also had some very stupid and reckless ideas of her own. Not that she'd ever admit that.

Lena got up from cover just enough for her to take aim at the closest thug and fired her stun gun, hitting him straight in the back. He fell to the ground with a shriek, drawing the attention of the other two, but she was ready and fired again.

She missed.

"It's the hacker!" The leader roared as he turned to her. Lena's heart was yammering in her chest, the thought of _how the fuck could I have missed like that_ having suddenly occupied her entire mind. Although her hesitation only lasted half a second, it was enough time for the leader to draw his gun at her. He would have shot her then, had Peter not come out of hiding with a yell, firing at him.

Lena fell back behind her cover just as one of Peter's blasts took down the other thug. The gunshots resumed, and she had been about to let out a sigh of relief that there was only one guy now when suddenly a sharp cry pierced through the air, followed by a crashing noise and the sound of breaking glass.

_Peter,_ she thought, her mind going blank when it came to anything else. Her heart jolted, panic rising, impulse taking over her again as she rose from cover and shot several electrical discharges at the remaining leader.

The man fell and she spared herself a couple of deep breaths before she started running on Peter's direction.

"Peter!" She called out. He'd fallen behind the counter so she couldn't see him, but she hoped he was okay – even though a million different scenarios of what might have happened ran through her mind, and none of them good.

Lena was stepping over the leader's body to get to Peter when something grabbed her ankle and made her fall to the ground with a grunt.

She barely had the time to wonder how the bounty hunter leader was still awake after multiple stun rounds when he made his move, lifting his gun at her again. This time she didn't hesitate, delivering a kick to his wrist that sent the gun flying out of his hands, followed by another kick to his face. The last one didn't prove to be as effective as she had hoped, and the man quickly got up and threw himself on top of her.

Her head hit the ground painfully, but she didn't have the time to recover as she suddenly felt hands wrapping around her throat. The man growled as he squeezed, and Lena found herself unsurprisingly unable to breathe.

She tried to retaliate, using every technique she had been taught for this kind of situation, but nothing seemed to work – he was just much too strong for her and nothing seemed to stun him long enough for her to escape. After that failed, Lena tried feeling around for her stun gun, but that had flown out of her hands when she had fallen to the ground. The man's gun was also out of reach, and no matter how hard she tried to find some kind of weapon to fight him off, there was nothing around her she could use.

That was when she saw it.

Right on the bounty hunter's side, the sheath of a knife attached to his armor.

_Maybe—_

Lena didn't think twice before she swiftly unsheathed the knife and drove it into his nearest vulnerable place: his throat.

She barely had the time to rejoice over the fact that her idea worked when the man stated to gurgle, choking on his own blood as the hands around her neck came loose. Lena took out the knife and blood came pouring down on her, falling down her arm and on her chest. The man remained a few seconds on top of her before he crashed to the side, hands coming up to his own neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Eventually he was the one who stopped moving.

Lena stared wide eyed at him as she gripped the knife tightly in her hand. She stared at him until she could no longer see any movements, not even the twitch of a muscle.

_He's dead._

_I just killed him._

As much as her brain understood what she was seeing, the reality of the situation didn't seem to quite catch up to her.

A noise startled her out of her thoughts and she promptly looked to the source. Some kind of fallen cabinet was moving, and then there was Peter crawling out from underneath and then—

"Lena." Peter said. "Lena. Hey." He repeated, laying a hand on her arm. Lena blinked in surprise – _when did he get over here…?_

In her daze she barely noticed his hands gripping her arms and tugging her upwards, barely noticed her letting go of the knife and standing up from the ground.

"Lena, we have to go." Peter said and Lena stared at him. It was like the whole world was in a daze, her mind everywhere and nowhere at once, and Lena decided to focus all her attention on Peter's words instead. "We don't know if more of them are coming, we need to _leave_."

Lena nodded and Peter, seemingly satisfied with her response, led her out of the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh noes, another two parter. I meant to write this as a single chapter but then I got carried away, soo…
> 
> Fret not that next chapter is already written (still need to edit it a bit for quality control and whatnot) so it should be up soon. Meanwhile, I'd like to thank everyone who left kudos/bookmarked and commented so far, feedback means so much to me you guys have no idea! I'm really happy people are enjoying this (extremely extreme) slow burn, which makes me excited to get to the good part. Which we will. One day. Anyways, you guys can also leave suggestions on what kind of thing (fluff/angst/whatever) you'd like to see – although I can't promise I'll be able to follow through immediately, it might help giving me some inspiration on what do to next!
> 
> Anyway, thank you guys so much and I'll see you next time!


	23. The Consequence of Choice Part II

There were no more bounty hunters on the way to the Milano, but Lena and Peter didn't risk slowing down their pace lest they get caught by the authorities – their records weren't exactly clean to begin with. Not only that, but who knew what other kind of attention the fight at the bar had drawn, so the first thing they did after reaching the ship was to hightail out of that planet.

Peter had run up to the cockpit immediately upon entering the Milano, leaving Lena alone in the common area – he probably had assumed that she would go follow him, but Lena ended up just standing there in a daze. The only movement she made was to unconsciously grab onto the nearest metal structure to keep from being tossed around as the ship took off, but otherwise she remained frozen to the spot.

_Grabbing the knife, feeling it pierce the soft flesh, warm liquid running down her arm…_

Lena lost track of time and of her surroundings as her head kept replaying the memory over and over again. Her mind barely registered the fact that the Milano was moving until the ship came to a sharp stop, and she finally snapped out of the memory loop inside her own head.

She blinked, gaze lifting up from where she'd been staring into nothing. Her eyes landed on her hand, the one that was holding on to the metal structure, and she froze once again.

It was covered in red, a bright red that was too bright to be human, and yet—it was definitely blood. She looked down her arm, the red blending into the dark fabric of her jacket to the point she could barely see it until she got to her shirt – the bright red there standing out from the light gray fabric in a sharp contrast, with some of it splattered over her collarbone and neck.

_I just killed a guy. I just killed a guy by stabbing him in the neck._

"Lena?" She heard a voice, head twitching in surprise as she looked up. Peter was in front of her and she hadn't even noticed him coming down. "Hey." He said, lightly touching her arm.

She blinked up at him a few times before looking down at her hand again. Peter followed her gaze, and once he saw the blood his hands came up to grip her forearms more urgently, albeit keeping his touch gentle.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" He asked, eyes searching her body for any signs of injury.

Lena looked up at him again, his question taking a couple more seconds to fully register. "No." She finally said. "No. It's not my blood."

"Oh." Peter said, making the connection. "But… You're okay?"

She stared at him blankly. "I just stabbed a guy in the neck."

"But you're okay?"

"I just _stabbed a guy in the neck_."

"Well… Better him than you."

"I just stabbed a guy in the neck!" She cried out, her breathing coming out faster as the reality of the situation hit her _hard_.

She'd just killed someone. And it wasn't even the first time she did it – she was pretty sure that guard in Driggo's group didn't survive the fall from that tower either. But things had been different then; she had gotten stabbed and nearly died herself, not mention the guard's death had technically been caused by the ground instead of her own hand.

Now she didn't have that excuse. The blood was proof to that.

"He would have killed you, Len." Peter said. "He would have killed both of us if you hadn't stopped him."

She _knew_ that. She knew what their line of work entailed, knew of the dangers that lurked around every corner.

"I—I—" She tried to say something, but nothing came out.

Why was it hitting her so hard all of the sudden? Well, she knew _why_ , but why had it never occurred to her before – not while they were stealing items and doing other illegal business, not while they were running from people shooting at them with the intent to kill, and especially not while she had been lying on that cell nearly bleeding to death from being stabbed in the gut – that this whole new life she was leading would eventually come to kill or be killed?

Did she really think it'd be all fun and games?

Did she really just think of illegal dealings and getting nearly killed on a regular basis as fun and games?

_What the hell is wrong with me?_

"What am I doing here?" She said, letting go of the sleeves of Peter's shirt that she hadn't even realized she'd been gripping.

Peter frowned, confused. "What do you mean?"

"What am I doing _here_?" She repeated. She didn't even care if she wasn't making any sense.

"…In the Milano?"

"Here!" She said, waving her hands around. "In space! With you. Doing… all of this."

Peter's expression hardened just a bit. "What are you saying?"

"I don't know!" She cried out, letting out a hysterical laugh that had nothing to do with humor. "I don't know! And that's the thing, I—I think I've bitten off _way_ more than I can chew here. I can't—I can't—" She paused, taking in a few shallow breaths. "I don't think I was born for this kind of life."

Peter had been watching her outburst in silence until he finally scowled and spoke. "No one is _born_ for this kind of life. But if life gives you shitty lemons, you just have to make a shitty lemonade!"

Lena's voice ended up rising some more. "Yeah, well, life didn't give me these lemons! I _chose_ these lemons on my own!" She tried keeping her voice down but it was no use. " _I_ chose to stay here when I could have gone back to Earth. _I_ started doing illegal jobs because I couldn't stay out of trouble in college. I couldn't stay out of trouble because—I don't know! It's what I've always done. It's all _me_."

"So what if it's all you? What does that have to do with anything?!"

"Because it's all on me! This life, this—everything. I can't say I'm doing this because I had no other choice. Because I did, and this is what I chose."

"Yeah, _so what_?"

"So—!" Lena blinked, shaking her head as the previous hysteria seemed to dissipate. "So…" She tried taking a few breaths to calm down but they didn't help. She still continued. "I just realized that I'm just some stupid Terran girl, with no home, no family, who got too blinded by the excitement and adventure of space and ended up in _way_ over her head." She said.

Tears stung in her eyes as the sudden reality of it all came crashing down all at once – the truth that she had been refusing to admit, even to herself.

"And I don't think I can do this." She finished.

Lena looked away, trying to contain her tears from falling but it was in vain. Silence reigned in the Milano, the only sound in the air being the constant hum of the engines. Lena wasn't sure what she was expecting Peter to say, if anything at all, but the silence unnerved her.

Eventually, though, Peter broke the silence. "So… you want to go back to Earth, is that it?" He said and Lena looked up sharply, not expecting that response. "Because we can do that – I can call the transporters right now and hire them to deliver you back to Earth. Is that what you want?"

_Is that what I want?_ She asked herself. Honestly, she had no idea. She didn't even know where she was going with all of this, the words spilling out after being bottled up for too long, but maybe this was the only logical course of action left for her.

"Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know." She said.

Peter shrugged, his face taking on a sharper look. "So you're just… giving up."

"I'm not—"

He interrupted her. "Because things got too hard, you're giving up."

"That's not—"

"You'd rather run back to Earth like a chicken—"

"I'm not a chicken!"

"—and go back to your old life, just because suddenly things got too hard for you to handle? You're just gonna go run back home, is that it?"

The word suddenly hit her. _Home_. Earth isn't home. She didn't have a home. Wasn't that why she didn't go back in the first place? Because she had no home to go back to?

"…I don't know." She muttered.

Peter threw his arms up. "Then I don't know how to help you!" He said and then rubbed a hand over his face. After a pause, he continued. "You… said you chose this, right? Why did you decide to stay here instead of going back?"

"…I don't know." Lena answered in a small voice.

Peter shook his head. "Well, why are you here now?"

"I don't know."

Peter let out an exasperated breath. "Fine. What do you want, then?"

"I don't _know_."

"So you're half a galaxy away from your home planet, living off my spaceship, for what? Shits and giggles?"

"Maybe I am just that kind of person."

Peter scowled. "No, you're _not_. Whatever it was, you had a reason."

Lena let out a humorless laugh. "Then you probably know more about it than I do because I have no clue."

Peter scowled again. "No, that would be _stupid_. And you're not stupid."

Lena did an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe—I was just looking for a new home!" She said and suddenly the word hit her again.

_A home_.

She meant to say it ironically but it ended up feeling a little too true.

Was _that_ why she stayed here? For a _home_? Was she really looking for a home out here in _space_ , in the middle of illegal jobs, dangerous escapades and regular life-threatening occurrences?

It sounded incredibly stupid when she thought of it like that, but it felt… true.

They fell into silence once more, their eyes locked with each other for a long moment before Lena's gaze unwittingly slipped downwards as she became lost in thought. The silence was broken when Peter spoke up, drawing her attention back to him.

"You should… go clean up. I'll make sure we weren't followed." He said and then sighed. "We can decide what to do later."

Lena watched as Peter turned away, shoulders slumped as he made his way up to the cockpit. The dejected look on his face tugged painfully at her insides, and Lena was startled at how, for that one moment, that bothered her more than the fact that she'd just stabbed a man in the neck.

Shaking her head, Lena took a deep breath to gather herself before heading to the bathroom.

\---

The hot shower helped calm her thoughts. All the blood was washed away, her stained clothes kicked to the corner of the bathroom much like the memory of what she did was kicked to the corner of her mind – probably as a coping mechanism, she vaguely thought, before kicking it much further back. Peter was still up in the cockpit when she left the bathroom, and the silence allowed her thoughts to wander to a different subject.

Home.

Home was such an abstract concept for her to chase after. It wasn't a thing she could get, or a goal to achieve – she didn't even know what a home was, or what it felt like.

She thought back to her childhood and the handful of foster homes she had lived in. She'd always found the name foster _home_ incredibly ironic as none of them ever came close to what she imagined a real home would be like.

Then she thought of her foster parents, the last pair of them, Joanna and Mark. They'd cared for her and the other foster children almost like they were their own, to the point she'd once had the hope of becoming a family with them. She'd been thirteen by then, when their son, their real son, died in a car crash and she ended up getting what she wanted, with Joanna and Mark officially adopting her and the other two children under their care after their son passed away. Instead of becoming a family like she'd hoped, though, she soon came to realize that they adopted them mostly out of guilt for failing with their real child.

She thought of how Mark got a new job that prompted them to move to America, away from the only place she'd ever known with promises that a change of pace would be for the best, when in reality they were really just trying to get away from the place their son died.

She thought of how she became the problematic child then, the one who couldn't make friends very well and was always getting in trouble, and who simply couldn't compare to the prodigy that was the youngest child and the normality of the well-adjusted older one.

She thought of how no matter how long she lived in that house, it never felt like _home_.

She remembered her first boyfriend, only boyfriend actually, from back in high school. How he had told her he loved her and she naively said it back, because surely falling in love with a sweet guy like that was what girls her age were supposed to be doing. How she eventually came to realize that she'd only been fooling herself, and ended up breaking things off in a panic the minute she left for college. How her friends from back then turned out to have never really been hers, but _his_ , judging from how they never talked to her again after she left for college which made her seriously question the concept of _friendship_.

She thought back to when she got kicked out of college, of ending up on her own, tangled in a series of illegal hacking jobs that piled up one after the other. She had never been as alone as she had been back then, living off cheap motel rooms and junk food, her only companions being her laptop and the many movies she would illegally download to fill the silence.

And that was when she had been abducted by aliens and thrown into a world she had never once expected to end up in. Needless to say, everything changed.

Feeling her throat dry, Lena moved to the cabinet where they kept their kitchenware, intent on getting some water – her head hurt and her throat ached, bruises already appearing around her neck from the bounty hunter's grip.

Well, not everything changed. She had been involved in illegal business then and she continued doing those now, only in space. And a hundred times more dangerous. In the end, she had just traded one complicated life for another, so why had she thought it'd be a good idea to stay—

She stopped, the door to the cabinet open as she looked inside.

That white box Peter had tried to hide from her before laid there, lid halfway open. It was made of a simple, paper-like material, and she assumed the contents were what mattered.

Not really thinking, Lena brought out the box and opened the top.

_Happy birthday!_ was written in big crass letters on the inside of the lid, the handwriting belonging to none other than Peter. Inside the box itself was a small cake—or some kind of large cupcake, with a smiley face messily drawn on top with the space equivalent of M &M's and a candle sticking out of the middle.

Lena paused, staring at the box's contents.

The biggest difference between her life then and her life now, she realized, was Peter. Even during the most dangerous jobs she had the assurance that Peter would be there by her side, while on Earth no matter what she did she'd just end up going back to her motel room, alone.

And it wasn't just about not being alone either, it was this weird feeling like—like she belonged here. Or could belong. Which was probably why situations like _this_ shook her up so bad – because they pulled out the rug from under her, a rug on which she'd started to make herself comfortable and safe, and suddenly it made her doubt the things she thought she already had a grasp on and made her feel like she was drowning in it.

Almost in a daze, Lena took the box with her when she moved towards her bunk. Sitting down, she laid the box in her lap and continued to stare at its contents.

It was stupid. This was stupid. The words written in Peter's awful handwriting, the unlit candle sticking out like a nose from the smiley face, the cake from which she could smell the aroma of her favorite Xandarian chocolate, the fact that Peter had bothered to whip this up for her—

It was Peter's fault. It really was. With him around, nothing felt half as serious as it actually was. He'd play his mixtape after getting on the Milano and she'd forget that they'd been running for their lives just a few moments prior; he'd smirk and throw an 80s reference at her and she'd forget how there were actual people trying to kill them at that very moment; he'd do something silly and ask her to dance and suddenly she'd forget she was half a galaxy away from everything she'd ever known, living the life of a criminal with a guy she'd only known for a year as her sole companion.

And she liked it.

Despite the feeling that maybe this wasn't the right place for her threatening to overwhelm her, she still wanted this. She _wanted_ to stay. She _wanted_ to belong here. Even if it meant going through situations like today, she still wanted to stay with—

Footsteps coming from the stairs broke her out of her thoughts. She briefly looked up to see Peter coming down, before returning to the box in her lap.

"Oh." She heard him say. "I guess, uh, you found that. Happy birthday?"

Lena glanced up at him again. She was starting to feel bad for unloading everything on him like that, especially since none of it was actually his fault – like she'd said, everything was on her. Peter had saved her life and provided her with a place to stay until they could find a way to get her back, only to welcome her back into his ship when she suddenly decided to stay on a whim. He taught her, guided her, saved her life more than once, and despite his constant complaining of her bossiness he still let her stay without asking for, well, anything, really. It wasn't his fault if she forgot what this kind of life entailed, no matter what she told herself.

The sudden realization that by choosing to stay here she ended up dumping herself and all her problems on Peter's lap made her avert her eyes in guilt.

Lena heard Peter move as he approached her, hesitating briefly before sitting down next to her in the bunk.

A few seconds of silence passed before he finally spoke. "I'm sorry about your birthday." He said quietly, wringing his hands together. "That wasn't how I had planned it to go. At all."

Lena took a breath, letting it wash over her before speaking. "I'm sorry I freaked out on you."

Peter let out a small snort. "It's okay, I think you're allowed. Especially considering…" He waved his hand as he trailed off. He sighed. "I'm sorry." Peter said, falling back into silence.

Lena nodded, thumbing the edges of the box absentmindedly.

Peter drew a breath beside her. "I know it's not easy. But…" He trailed off again before resuming. "It's not easy." He finished, as if he'd given up on what he'd been about to say before.

Nodding again, Lena wet her lips as she tried looking for the right words. She had never been one to talk about her feelings to anyone, probably because she never really had anyone to do so, but she suddenly had the urge to tell Peter—something. She owed him that much.

"…I don't really want to go." She spoke quietly. "I want to stay."

Peter tentatively nodded beside her.

"But… I don't really know why." She lied. She knew why – because she could. Because she was selfish. "I—I don't really have any purpose to being here." She admitted, this time being honest. Just because she wanted to be here didn't give her a purpose to _being here_ , intruding in Peter's life like she'd been doing for the past year or so.

"Yes, you do." Peter spoke up, breaking her out of her thoughts. "You're my partner."

Lena blinked back her emotions, a warm feeling surging up inside of her that was quickly drowned out by a much colder one. "Yeah, but… you don't really _need_ me here, Peter. You've been doing fine on your own all this time."

_I'm sorry for making your life difficult_ , was what she wanted to say. _I'm sorry for being a burden on you for no good reason other than 'I wanted to'._

A moment of silence passed before he said anything.

"Yeah." He agreed, much to her surprise. "But I like you here."

Lena stopped, staring at him straight in the eye. The earnest look there, the way he said it so as-a-matter-of-factly… it made her realize that maybe this was all much simpler than she was making it out to be.

"…I like being here too." She finally said.

Peter shook his head, face breaking out into a crooked smile. "So what's the issue here?"

His smile was infectious and a similar one took over her lips. "I don't know."

"Well…" He patted her knee as he stood up. "While you're figuring that out, what do you say we have some cake, huh? It should still be your birthday."

Lena looked down at the cake in her hands, the smiley face on top suddenly seeming a lot more cheery than it did a moment ago. She barely took notice of Peter walking to his personal compartment and back until he stood in front of her, and she blinked up in surprise when a small object was thrust in her face.

"Here." He said.

She regarded the object in confusion – it was the size of his palm and roundish, although she couldn't make out what it was since it was wrapped up in some kind of silvery paper. "What is it?" She asked.

"It's a, uh… birthday gift." Peter said, and if Lena had been in a better state of mind she'd have noticed how he sounded a little… embarrassed. "I found it in a thrift shop some time ago and bought it because what the hell, and it's your birthday and I figured you might like it, so…"

Lena set the cake aside to take the object from his hand.

Unwrapping it revealed it to be a small snow globe, the figure of the Eiffel Tower sitting in the center amidst the floating snowflakes. There was a small crack in the glass and the word 'Paris' written at the bottom, and it was so ridiculous because she'd never been to Paris, or France, or Europe, before – or had any kind of memory about the place whatsoever – but a sudden familiarity struck her, like the feeling of going back to a place you haven't visited in a long time.

And it was strange, because she half expected to feel some sort of homesickness about her home planet – but she didn't, because it wasn't _home_. If anything, it just cemented her decision that she wanted to stay here regardless of anything else.

Peter was looking at her expectantly when she lifted her head. Lena blinked up at him, trying to figure out what to say in this situation – or how to say it, maybe, but even she was having trouble sorting through her own feelings. When no words came to her, she settled for the next best thing.

She got up and hugged him.

Throwing her arms around his neck, Lena felt Peter stiffen in surprise at the action. She briefly considered pulling away then, starting to regret her decision given Peter's lack of response, when she suddenly felt his arms tentatively come up to circle her body.

As he wrapped his arms around her back he hunched down, allowing her to bury her face on the crook of his neck without having to stand on her tip toes. She felt him let out a small sigh as his grip tightened around her, bringing her closer, and for once Lena let herself indulge in the sensation it brought without worrying about boundaries and friendship and anything else.

And it was certainly _something_ – Peter's familiar scent assaulted her nose and it was all she could smell; his warmth surrounded her, his solid presence anchoring her to the present and suddenly she felt—safe. Welcomed. Lena let every other thought disappear from her mind as she focused on him alone, and she unconsciously tightened her arms around him, unwilling to let go of this unexpected comfort. Peter made no move to pull away, much to her relief, and Lena let herself believe that what she felt – about this, them, everything – wasn't as one-sided as she had previously thought it to be.

They remained that way for a few long moments, his thumb lightly caressing her back as Lena continued clinging on to him. She had never hugged anyone like this – losing herself in the comfort of another person's warmth while at the same time trying to convey her feelings through that gesture alone.

"Thank you." She eventually said, feelings manifesting into words and slipping out before she could stop them. Her voice came out muffled as her face was still pressed against him, and she hoped she hadn't disturbed this quiet peace they'd created.

"For what?" He asked, thankfully not pulling away. Lena could feel the rumblings of his chest on her own.

A moment of silence passed before Lena shook her head in response. Truth be told, she wasn't sure what she was thanking him for either.

Even though Peter didn't move from his position, the moment had been broken the minute the words left her mouth. She started becoming self-conscious of the way she was clinging on to him, embarrassment flooding in as she realized what she was doing. In the end, she was the one who pulled away first.

Lena cleared her throat as she stepped back, the pain around her neck making itself known once again. She let her arms drop to her sides as Peter did the same, her body suddenly feeling cold as they separated.

"So, uh—" She started, clearing her throat again. "About that cake…"

She took a moment to look up and when she did, the first thing she saw was Peter staring at her strangely. It wasn't a look she was used to seeing on his face – and she couldn't even pinpoint what it meant – but it only lasted a few seconds before it dissolved away, replaced by a smile as he spoke, "Let's go have some cake."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did it get so long?? How??
> 
> I'm not entirely happy with how this turned out, angst and seriousness is not something I'm very good with, haha. I ended up rewriting and editing this several times before I was happy enough to publish it and here we are, so forgive me if anything feels… choppy. Anyway, this chapter was born from me wanting to get some backstory in about Lena and do some exploration with her character, as well as set some things up for their relationship. After this I don't think I have a whole lot I want to explore though (aside from a couple of things here and there and maybe fluff) so we may be getting to the first movie sooner rather than later. Stay tuned!
> 
> Also this fic has been getting so many more hits ever since Vol. 2 opened and I love it hehe. Thank you guys so much for the kind words and all the feedback I got from last chapter! They really are what's keeping this fic alive (and regularly updated). Thank you!


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